
COPYRIC.HT DEPOSIT. 



FINITE AND INFINITE 



FINITE AND 
INFINITE 

BY 

THOMAS CURRAN RYAN 

OF THE WISCONSIN BAR 



" And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall 
search for me with ail your heart." — Jer, xxix. 13 




PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON 
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 

1905 



^'Vty^ 7, /96S 

copy e 




Copyright, 1905 
By J. B. LippiNCOTT Company 



Published November, 1905 



Printed by 
J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, U. S. A, 



PREFACE 

r 

Our Heavenly Father has endowed 
us with the powers of observing, thinking, 
and reasoning. Therefore we owe Him 
the duty to discern and think as well as 
we are able, and to teach with such clear- 
ness as is given us ; holding to what 
appears as Truth, with such firmness and 
such humility that conscience and judg- 
ment shall always be in accord with word 
and deed, and preserving such unfailing 
trust in His wisdom and love that we 
shall never be dismayed because what 
seems folly to-day was thought to be 
science yesterday. In the search for 
truth, error detected becomes the lamp 
of experience, folly an honest effort to 
obtain wisdom. To know the one truth 
is well, but is not the highest moral 

5 



6 PREFACE 

flight. We must also know the many 
things that are false or only in part true ; 
for to know them is wisdom, and having 
wisdom we shall the more readily find 
other truth. Thus truth and wisdom 
wax stronger, subsisting upon each 
other, and the moral nature of man is 
subjected to the divine method of evo- 
lution. 

T. C. R. 

Wausau, Wisconsin, 
October, 1905. 



CONTENTS 

r 

PART I 

ACTUS DEI 



CHAPTER I 

PAGE 

Introduction 15 



CHAPTER II 
Truth and Knowledge 21 

CHAPTER III 
Th« Absolute Persistence of Truth 30 

CHAPTER IV 
The Theoretical and the Possible 39 

CHAPTER V 

The Constancy of Phenomena 49 

7 



8 CONTENTS 

CHAPTER VI 

PAGE 

The Finite and the Infinite 59 

CHAPTER VII 
Ideas of God . 67 

CHAPTER VIII 
The Spacial Idea of God 77 

CHAPTER IX 
An Idealistic Dilemma 87 

CHAPTER X 
Actus Dei 94 

CHAPTER XI 
The Story of Cyclone Smith 109 

CHAPTER XII 
Ethics and Nature 119 

CHAPTER XIII 
Twice Nothing is Nothing 129 

CHAPTER XIV 
A Statement of the Question 133 



CONTENTS 9 

CHAPTER XV 

PAGE 

Facts versus Conjecture 140 

CHAPTER XVI 
Summing up the Argument 150 

CHAPTER XVII 
Conclusion 158 



PART II 

A FINITE UNIVERSE 



CHAPTER I 

What is the sky? — The author's views sent to Popular 
Astronomy in 1 894 ; synopsis thereof published and 
comments of the editor — Herschel, Tyndall, Wallace, 
and Spring agree that its color proves the sky to be 
matter of some sort 165 

CHAPTER II 

The components of the color of the sky, — matter and 
light ; where is the matter ; whence comes the light, 
— from our sun, or from the distant suns? — The 
Herschel theory and Tyndall' s experiment, —a bottle 
of sky — The impregnable wall of the Sidereal City — 
Spring's criticism of Tyndall' s experiment ; the oxy- 
gen theory I77 



lo CONTENTS 

CHAPTER III 

PAGE 

"Man's Place in the Universe " — Wallace's theory of 
a dust-sky — The constant sky and the fickle wind — In- 
conceivable elements in the Wallace theory — Its self- 
contradictions — A transparent, opaque cloud that you 
see through and cannot see through, as you wish — 
Density in the line of vision — Possible significance of 
the fact that oxygen is blue l88 

CHAPTER IV 

The prevailing idea that the universe is finite — Views 
of Miss Clerke — Professor Newcomb's mathematical 
demonstration that an infinite star-system would give 
us a blazing sky — The tentative attitude of those who 
hesitate to accept this view — Other possible explana- 
tions why the whole sky is not as bright as the sun — 
Ether may not be a perfect light carrier ; dark suns 
and other opaque matter might intercept light — 
Tyndall's experiment with light, and his theory of 
its transmission 20i 

CHAPTER V 

Necessity of examining science as to its views about 
the ether — Sloane' s statement of the ether theory — 
Professor Comstock's description of wave-radiation- 
Humboldt's history of the ether idea ; the akasa of the 
ancient Hindu philosophers ; transplanted from India 
to Greece, — " precisely similar to the vibrating light- 
ether of Huygens, Hooke, and modern physicists " — 
Irving' s remarks about ether — Has the real question 
been asked? — The worthless half of experimental 
science 220 



CONTENTS II 

CHAPTER VI 

PAGB 

The other side of the ether question — Spencer heaves a 
metaphysical rock — Fiske makes a bull's-eye — The 
French school of physicists is heard in protest — A 
metaphysical bogie 236 

CHAPTER VII 

Is the universe finite ? — Inferences from the phenomenon 
of star "magnitude" — Newcomb's researches in this 
field — Young's statement of the facts — The absolute 
persistence of light ; light from nebulae, and comets' 
tails — The discovery of light pressure — Going into 
the realm of the inconceivable to find the problemati- 
cal effect of a dubious cause — Wallace speaks to 
the point — Carl Snyder adds a new suggestion — 
Wallace sums up, and in fancy paints a blue sky 
upon a "dark background." 249 

CHAPTER VIII 

A finite universe and an infinite mass of matter — Opinions 
of Newcomb, Irving, and Comstock — No disagree- 
ment as to the infinite spacial extent of matter — That 
which is created is necessarily of finite spacial extent 
— That which is of infinite spacial extent is, of 
necessity, self-existent 270 

CHAPTER IX 

Shape of the star-system ; opinions of Wallace, Young, 
Newcomb, Comstock, and others — The experiment 
made by Herschel and Celoria — The camera has 
reached the farthest boundary of the star-system — 



I 2 CONTENTS 

PAGB 

Our sun's central location among the stars, indicating 
that stellar evolution began in our neighborhood — 
Gravitation as a factor in the evolution of the star- 
system — History of the idea that bodies of matter 
attract each other — Newton's predecessors in this 
field of inquiry ; he proved yfha.t o^ers suggested . . 280 

CHAPTER X 

The law of gravitation as formulated by Newton ; its 
three subdivisions — How the energy of gravitation 
acts ; its mysterious behavior — Why the law of 
gravitation is inoperative in an infinite mass 293 

CHAPTER XI 

Gravitation and the Finite — The potentiality of a zone of 
empty space — The beginning of evolution, — a bound- 
ary between the Finite and the Infinite — Birth of the 
first sun — Probability that star evolution progresses 
from within outward — More evidence that the uni- 
verse is finite — What lies beyond the star system ? . . 304 

CHAPTER XII 

The lesson to be learned from a finite universe ; its 
refutation of the fundamental tenet of Idealism — The 
fallacies of Idealism ; the danger to Christianity. . . 316 

Appendix 331 

Index 337 



PART I 
ACTUS DEI 



" Every good gift and every perfect gift is from 
above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, 
writh whom is no variableness, neither shadow of 
turning. ' ' — J amis i. 17 



CHAPTER I 

INTRODUCTION 

Destiny is evolution ; evolution is 
trend ; trend is infinite. Destiny com- 
prehends an infinite number of finite 
conditions ; it is the new ever replacing 
the old ; it was, it is, it is to be ; it came 
ages ago ; it comes to-day ; it is in the 
future, — waiting. Every mile-stone on 
the endless thoroughfare of Time is 
Destiny. Do these mile-stones belong 
to Man? Or is he only one of them? 
We cannot answer apart from God. No 
general system of philosophy has been 
deemed complete that did not seek after 
a First Cause. Hence it is that all great 
philosophers have given to the world 
their ideas of God, or of something they 
chose to put in His place. 

The effect cannot antedate the cause. 

15 



1 6 FINITE AND INFINITE 

Therefore, as destiny is limitless its 
cause can have neither end nor begin- 
ning. The conditions of to-day, having 
been caused by those of the past, are 
themselves to be the causes of future 
conditions. There was no initial time, 
no beginning of destiny, no first cause ; 
for these expressions imply limits,— 
finites ; but cause, time, destiny, are 
among the eternals. This little word 
"first" has sometimes led science and 
philosophy upon a search for the begin- 
nings of things eternal, the causes of 
things that were not caused but are self- 
existent There is no first cause, but 
there is an Eternal Cause ; all other /^ 
causes are secondary. As infinites can- xy^ 
not be caused, the Eternal produces 
only finites, — forms. These are subject 
to the laws of evolution. Evolution, 
therefore, comprehends the destiny of 
all things which God has caused, — it is 
the divine method. Man is interested in 



ACTUS DEI 17 

evolution because it is a revelation of 
God's methods and purposes. The more 
man is intellectually trained and morally 
enlightened the less is his satisfaction 
with existing knowledge concerning the 
Creator. He wants to know more, — all 
that possibly can be learned concerning 
God. He hopes to obtain from that 
knowledge inference of God's purpose 
concerning the human race. 

From year to year, the tree of knowl- 
edge of good and evil, nurtured in the 
hopes and fears, the smiles and tears, 
of Humanity, bears better harvest. Be- 
hold, afar, the faint but sure promise of 
a day when its richest fruit, evolved in 
the heart-travail and soul-struggle of the 
ages, will be gathered : — a theology that 
shall be an all-inclusive philosophy, — a 
philosophy embracing God and all evi- 
dences of what He has done, is doing, 
and intends to do, with His creation, 
and for His creatures, — a theology that 



1 8 FINITE AND INFINITE 

will convince the intellect, thereby awak- 
ening to full fruition in the spirit of man 
the divine seeds of faith, hope, and love. 

Thus our minds o-q out into the 
future, — the far future, it may be. Yet 
we are advised by some well-meaning 
souls that, as we can live only in the 
present, our best preparation for the 
future is to devote ourselves solely to 
present duties, " leaving the future to 
care for itself until we reach it," These 
good people believe themselves intensely 
practical, yet their advice is of a sort 
that will brinof certain failure to any 
business man who follows it. 

The future must be considered in all 
that goes to make up earthly life. We 
take food to satisfy present craving and 
to preserve ourselves for coming tasks. 
We care for the child that it may be 
happy day by day and live to a vigorous 
and useful manhood. We educate our 
youths to prepare them for a future 



ACTUS DEI 19 

which ignorance might find unsolvable. 
It is only by knowing what may reason- 
ably be expected from to-morrow that 
we are able to discern our whole duty 
for to-day. 

No argument is to be made here, save 
incidentally, in support of belief that 
God exists. Such an argument I hope 
to present in another book. My pur- 
pose now, is to consider, first, such 
evidences of God's disposition toward 
the world, as may be found in the history 
of nature ; and, second, as to whether, in 
the light of science and philosophy, we 
may conceive of Him as other than a 
Person, having such attributes as are, to 
human understanding, inseparable from 
personality. Is God a comprehensible 
and real friend who has imparted to 
human nature His own standard of right 
and wrong ? Or is He an inconceivable, 
unapproachable, unknowable something, 
of infinite spacial extent and therefore 



20 FINITE AND INFINITE 

necessarily formless, — the cause of 
things that we call Evil and Good, Right 
and Wrong, which, judged by His stand- 
ard, may be neither, but something not 
given us to know ? 

Such an inquiry, not based upon divine 
revelation, does not belong to theology 
in the commonly accepted sense of that 
word. It pertains, rather, to philosophy. 
Let us then prepare for it by an acquaint- 
ance with some basal principles of phil- 
osophy which should govern the method, 
and mental attitude, of all searchers for 
truth. This preliminary study will 
occupy the next four chapters. 



CHAPTER II 

TRUTH AND KNOWLEDGE 

Philosophy has expended much wordy 
war upon the questions, What is Truth ? 
What is the test of Truth ? The centre 
of this battle-field in modern times seems 
to have been the inquiry, Is there or can 
there be any conscious truth dissociated 
from experience ? Truth may exist with- 
out knowledge, but knowledge cannot 
be separated from truth. We cannot 
know what is untrue, and we know only 
a part of what is true. 

Human life and its environments and 
limitations are such that the sort of 
knowledge discussed by philosophers is 
often lacking when one is required to 
act. In these cases we are compelled to 
act with only the lamp of probability to 
guide our footsteps. Thus acting, we 



2 2 FINITE AND INFINITE 

acquire further knowledge. We do not 
seem, however, to be nearing any goal. 
The search after knowledge does not 
present to our minds any promise of 
complete achievement. On the contrary, 
it impresses us, more and more, as being 
a process which must go on forever, as 
new questions, before Unsuspected, are 
thrust upon us. An illustration of this 
is the fact that just now science is begin- 
ning to concede the necessity of investi- 
gating matters occurring, or said to be 
occurring, in the field known as " Psychic 
phenomena ;" though it was only a very 
short time ago that a suggestion of such 
investigation coming from scientists of 
repute, such as Crookes and ZoUner, 
and some others, was received with de- 
rision. Thus as we journey on in our 
search for truth and knowledge an ever- 
widening vista in the infinite realm of 
the Unknown opens before us. And 
this is the means whereby Intellect is 



ACTUS DEI 23 

subjected to the universal law of evolu- 
tion. 

The battle between Hume and Kant 
seems like many of the contests fought 
over doctrinal questions in the religious 
world. Hume insisted that the only way 
of reaching truth is through uniformity 
of experience. Kant alleged that no 
amount of experience can justly be 
termed uniform, since there is an eternity 
before us during which exceptions may 
arise, — that uniformity up to the present 
time does not make it a " necessary " or 
"absolute" truth, but only a " contin- 
gent " truth, — a truth upon probation, as 
it were, — a probation which, however, 
cannot culminate in proof. Kant had his 
own test of truth, which was to inquire 
whether its negation is conceivable. For 
example, I assert that I exist ; can my 
mind conceive a negation, — that I do not 
exist? I assert that two straight lines 
cannot enclose a space ; can my mind 



24 FINITE AND INFINITE 

conceive that two straight Hnes may en- 
close a space ? In each case, negation 
being inconceivable, the assertion be- 
comes a "necessary" or "absolute" 
truth. 

I do not like the idea of coupling ad- 
jectives with truth. It does not appear 
to be an accurate mode of expressing 
what is meant, for it is not supposable 
that there are really different sorts of 
truth, and what is meant is only the 
attitude of our mind toward the evi- 
dences presented, or found, and appear- 
ing relevant to the question whether a 
statement or proposition is or is not the 
truth. We know that the answer of 
Truth lies beyond every inquiry. But 
how will it answer? It it be a question 
that can be answered "yes" or "no," 
which of these answers will Truth make? 
If it be Kant's question, "Can two 
straight lines enclose a space?" the 
answer of Truth is instantaneous, — 



ACTUS DEI 25 

"No." Why this instantaneous answer? 
"Experience," replies Hume; "Nega- 
tion is inconceivable," says Kant. 

But suppose we ask a question to 
which there is no such obvious answer : 
suppose we ask, "What is the sky?" 
Can we conceive that there is no answer? 
No. We know, as well as we know 
there is a sun, that there is a something 
which we call sky, and so we can no 
more conceive that this thing does not 
exist than we can conceive the possi- 
bility of there being no answer to the 
question, What is it? But how is Truth 
going to answer this question? In this 
case, as in a great many others, like the 
indicted Irishman when asked by the 
judge, "Are you guilty or not guilty?" 
we must wait until we hear the evi- 
dence. But shall we know then ? Pos- 
sibly, but more likely all we shall know 
will be that if Truth made answer, the 
answer would quite probably be thus, 



26 FINITE AND INFINITE 

or so. And we should have a "con- 
tingent" truth. Now why call this any 
sort of truth? Why not say it is a 
hypothesis that has a greater or less 
appearance of truth ? Truth is one of 
those exact thincrs which can never 
assume but one shape. To call it con- 
tingent is to compound two incongruous 
ideas into one which means neither truth 
nor anything else. 

John Fiske, after reviewing the argu- 
ments of Hume and Kant, and finding 
neither of them satisfactory nor com- 
plete, joined both together in one uni- 
versal canon of truth, as follows: — 

"A necessary truth is one that is expressed in 
a proposition of which the negation is incon- 
ceivable, after all disturbing conditions have been 
eliminated. 

"A proposition of which the negation is incon- 
ceivable is necessarily true in relation to human 
intelligence. 

" This test of inconceivability is the only ulti- 



ACTUS DEI 27 

mate test of truth which philosophy can accept 
as valid. 

"Thus the uniformity-test of Hume and the 
inconceivability-test of Kant are fused together 
in a deeper synthesis, — the deepest which philos- 
ophy can reach. As Mr. Spencer forcibly states 
it : * Conceding the entire truth of the position 
that, during any phase of human progress, the 
ability or inability to form a specific conception 
wholly depends on the experience men have had; 
and that, by a widening of their experiences, 
they may by-and-by be enabled to conceive things 
before inconceivable to them; it may still be 
argued, that as at any time the best warrant men 
can have for a belief is the perfect agreement of 
all pre-existing experience in support of it, it 
follows that, at any time, the inconceivableness 
of its negation is the deepest test any belief 
admits of. Objective facts are ever impressing 
themselves upon us ; our experience is a register 
of these objective facts ; and the inconceivable- 
ness of a thing implies that it is wholly at vari- 
ance with the register. Even were this all, it is 
not clear how, if every truth is primarily induc- 
tive, any better test of truth could exist. But 
it must be remembered, that whilst many of these 



28 FINITE AND INFINITE 

facts impressing themselves upon us are occasional; 
whilst others again are very general ; some are 
universal, and are unchanging. These universal 
and unchanging facts are, by the hypothesis, cer- 
tain to establish beliefs of which the negations are 
inconceivable.' " 

From this it will be seen that Hume, 
Spencer, and Fiske do not disagree with 
Kant as to the existence of truth which 
is " self-evident." They differ merely as 
to the causes which induce this mental 
attitude toward that class of truths. 

Philosophy, in so far as it attempts to 
deal with the human mind, is handi- 
capped very much as astronomy was 
before the invention of the telescope, 
the camera, and the spectroscope. It 
has only been able to examine those 
mental processes which are so very slow 
that they give plenty of time for obser- 
vation. It has been forced to recognize 
the fact of a subconscious condition of 
mind which acts with inconceivable rapid- 



ACTUS DEI 29 

ity, dreaming in an instant such a host 
of events as would occupy a week of 
normal thinking. We do not know but 
that all this truth which we call "self- 
evident" may come to our objective 
consciousness through this subconscious 
mill. Probably we shall never find out 
in the present life the secrets of this 
class of mental phenomena. We may 
find out more or less about them, but 
when It comes to finding them, labora- 
tories are useless. The tangible cannot 
measure the intangible. 



CHAPTER III 

THE ABSOLUTE PERSISTENCE OF TRUTH 

"Absolute" or "necessary" truths, 
says Fiske, "can be recognized by a 
simple act of consciousness, as self-evi- 
dent." And for this very reason they 
are not susceptible of demonstration or 
proof. " You believe in your own ex- 
istence, of which, however, you can fur- 
nish no logical demonstration, simply 
because it is an ultimate fact in your 
consciousness which underlies and pre- 
cedes all demonstration," When Fiske 
follows up this with the statement that, 
if asked why we believe two straight 
lines cannot enclose a space, we can 
only reply that we believe it simply 
because we must believe it, perhaps a 
trivial issue might be joined with him. 
I am, myself, conscious of a momentary 
30 



ACTUS DEI 31 

process of reasoning when answering" 
this class of questions; while, when an- 
swering such questions as, Do I exist? 
Is something nothing ? Is there space ? 
Is there time ? Is the beginning before 
the end ? Is there a boundary to space, 
or an end to time ? Is design the same 
as chance ? Are there such things as 
motion, heat, light, matter, mind, life? 
and thousands or tens of thousands of 
similar questions that might be asked, 
I am conscious of no mental process or 
act whatever, save the mere fact that I 
already possess the answer of Truth. 
In other words, I am conscious that I 
am conscious, and that is all. 

Nevertheless, whether we become con- 
scious of the truth through demonstra- 
tion, or have it already in our conscious- 
ness, as one of those truths too self- 
evident to admit of demonstration, we 
are not conscious that these are different 
sorts or degrees of truth. The result 



32 FINITE AND INFINITE 

of demonstration and the ipse dixit of 
consciousness are equally truth to us, 
and we are as ready to swear by one as 
the other. Having pictured to ourselves 
the two straight lines, and satisfied our- 
selves that their shape is such that we 
cannot enclose a space with them, unless 
we destroy our proposition by changing 
the shape of one or both lines, we are 
as fully convinced that it cannot be done 
as we are of our own existence. So with 
more elaborate demonstrations. When 
truth is demonstrated, whether by the 
elimination of one, two, or twenty incon- 
ceivable propositions running counter to 
the successive steps by which the demon- 
stration is reached, the converse of the 
result attained is found to be absolutely 
inconceivable, and we know that Truth 
has made its answer, — not "relative" 
truth, not even "absolute" truth, but 
simply truth. Anything short of this 
may cause in our minds the attitude of 



ACTUS DEI 33 

belief. It points, maybe, to the truth, 
in which case it may lead us to the 
truth. It points, maybe, to error, in 
which case its believers will sooner or 
later find themselves upon the wrong 
path, and abandon it. 

Let the foundation of inconceivability 
be named experience, or intuition, or 
what you will ; the fact of inconceiva- 
bility is the all-important thing. It is, 
of course, true that "by a widening of 
their experience men may by-and-by be 
enabled to conceive things before incon- 
ceivable to them," as Spencer says. 
That statement may be made even 
stronger and be within the truth, for 
this may not only be so "by-and-by," 
but it is so now, inasmuch as men with 
wide experience are able to conceive 
things inconceivable to others who have 
had little experience. Nevertheless, this 
is also true, — that when it comes to con- 
ceiving the possibility of an absurdity 



34 FINITE AND INFINITE 

involving the mixing of incongruous 
ideas, such as that nothing can be 
changed into something, or something 
into nothing, ability to form this class of 
conceptions is measured, not by that 
strengthening of mentality which comes 
from a "widening of experience," but 
by that childish credulity which is the 
companion of ignorance. It is true that 
learned men have for ages accepted 
without question beliefs now inconceiv- 
able to learned men, — such as that 
matter is destructible, — can be changed 
to nothing, and its corollary, — that it 
might be made from nothing, which 
Fiske likens to "framing in thought an 
equation between something and noth- 
ing." Such vagaries are not to be digni- 
fied by the title of thoughts, or concep- 
tions; they are mere assertions uttered 
by the mouth, and disregarded by the 
mind. There have been always people 
ready to take their beliefs second-hand, 



ACTUS DEI 35 

as children do, and to resent assault 
upon such fancied beliefs as heartily as 
if they were real. Fiske well says: 

"The assent of philosophers in past ages, or 
of uneducated people in our own age, to sundry- 
unthinkable propositions, is not to be cited as 
evidence that there are minds which can think 
what is unthinkable. The building up of enor- 
mous theories out of purely verbal propositions, 
which do not correspond to any thinkable con- 
catenation of conceptions, has always been the 
besetting sin of human philosophizing. ' ' 

While I do not like the term "abso- 
lute" truth because it implies that there 
may be truth which is less than truth ; 
nor "relative" truth which suggests a 
sort of quasi truth that may be true 
from one stand-point and not from 
another ; nor " contingent" truth be- 
cause it signifies that what may be false 
should be presumed innocent until its 
guilt is proven, I have no fault to find 
with the term "self-evident" truth, as it 



36 FINITE AND INFINITE 

means a truth which proves itself, — fits 
into human consciousness without dem- 
onstration, — nor "demonstrated" or 
"demonstrable" truth, for these terms 
do not suggest any qualification of truth 
itself, they merely imply the process 
whereby we become conscious of it. 

Mind, however, that I am not speaking 
of that truth which can only be discerned 
spiritually, or through what has been 
called revelation. I believe there are 
truths which can, in the present state of 
existence, be found by no other means 
than revelation. But the history of the 
human race, if it proves anything, proves 
more convincingly than anything else, 
the danger and unwisdom of giving 
credulous attention to those who claim 
to have found spiritual truth. The 
human race seems to have stood, from 
its infancy to the present time, in an 
attitude of reverent submission before 
the Spirit-world, with implicit faith that 



ACTUS DEI 37 

it contains the infinite store-house of 
Truth, where an answer to every ques- 
tion, whether mundane or spiritual, can 
be found. Man has always been afraid 
that some spiritual message should come 
to him unheeded or unrecognized. This 
mental attitude of the race toward the 
spiritual has furnished an excellent op- 
portunity for all sorts of cranks, con- 
fidence-men, and insane seekers of noto- 
riety, and they have never been slow to 
take advantage of it. Hence, we have 
always presented to us the spectacle of 
multitudes following such as these, and 
ready to believe that in heaven there 
are round triangles and square circles, 
if their "prophet" declares the fact so 
to be. 

Let us not be so unwise as to think 
that there are two degrees of truth, 
one for heaven, and another for earth. 
What is truth anywhere is, of necessity, 
truth everywhere. John Stuart Mill, 



38 FINITE AND INFINITE 

though he was a philosopher, in order 
to equip himself for attack upon one of 
Spencer's propositions, appears to have 
persuaded his own mind, in some in- 
scrutable way, to conceive the possibility 
that there may be some distant planet 
where two added to two will make five. 
If that were so, then "twice two are 
five" would be truth in that planet and 
falsehood in our own ; and if this propo- 
sition, inconceivable to us now, may be 
true in some other part of space, it may 
become conceivable to mankind at some 
distant period of time. Truth is not of 
such fluctuating- character. Like the 
eternal God, to whose kingfdom it be- 
longs, it is the same yesterday, to-day, 
and forever. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE THEORETICAL AND THE POSSIBLE 

That which is theoretical, and at the 
same time irrefutably logical, may, never- 
theless, lead to a result that is impos- 
sible. When this is the case we may 
be sure that some essential factor was 
omitted from the premises. Two very 
ancient and familiar attempts to prove 
the theoretical possibility of infinite divi- 
sion will illustrate this : 

The first relates to the divisibility of 
numbers,— Divide i by 2, the quotient 
by 2, that quotient again by 2, and so 
continue to divide each successive quo- 
tient by 2. It is inconceivable that a 
time will come when you will have a 
quotient not thus divisible. It is inferred 
from this that a mathematical number is 
infinitely divisible, — nay, more, — it is as- 

39 



40 FINITE AND INFINITE 

serted that the human mind cannot con- 
ceive of it as being otherwise. Neither 
the inference nor the assertion will stand 
the test of cross-examination. In the 
first place we know that infinite division 
requires infinite time, and that which 
requires infinite time can never be done. 
However long the division be kept up 
it must always remain a finite result. 
An infinite task can never be finished. 
Such a result as the infinite divisibility 
of a given number is merely impossible. 
In the second place, as to the assertion 
that the human mind can form no con- 
ception of a number as being less than 
infinitely divisible, the reverse is true, 
for the human mind cannot conceive of 
a number as infinitely divided : — a con- 
ception of such actual division being im- 
possible, a conception of infinite divisi- 
bility is impossible. We can conceive 
of the process going on interminably, 
but we cannot conceive of it as being 



ACTUS DEI 41 

finished, either by finite or by infinite 
intelligence or power, inasmuch as an 
end to eternity is an impossible con- 
ception. 

Our second illustration comes firom 
the realm of the material. Let us take 
Fiske's statement of the current idea as 
set forth in his "Cosmic Philosophy :" 

" Yet we shall find that an absolutely indivisi- 
ble atom is quite inconceivable by human intelli- 
gence. Every such atom, if it exists, must have 
an upper side and an under side, a right side and 
a left side, or if spherical, must have a periphery 
that is conceived as covering some assignable area. 
Now by no effort of our intelligence can we im- 
agine sides so close together that no plane of 
cleavage can pass between them ; nor can we 
imagine a sphere so minute that it cannot be con- 
ceived as divisible into hemispheres ; nor can we 
imagine a cohesive tenacity so great that it might 
not be overcome by still greater disruptive force 
such as we can equally well imagine. ' ' 

This may look like irrefutable logic, 
and yet it can be easily proved that 



42 FINITE AND INFINITE 

matter is not and cannot be thus infi- 
nitely divisible. In the first place the 
modes of possible subdivision of matter 
are all included in the three processes 
of disruption by pulling asunder, cleav- 
age, and explosive energy. In the 
second place the postulate with which 
we must start out is that there exists 
such a thing as absolute cohesion of 
particles, and this we do not know, and 
are beginning to seriously doubt. Still, 
if we assume that such absolute cohe- 
sion exists in any form of matter larger 
than the corpuscle,^ — a minute subdivi- 
sion of the atom, we may, for the pur- 
pose of the argument, concede that 
division, as distinguished from the wider 
separation of things that were never in 
absolute contact, has been accomplished, 
and proceed with the work of further 
division, from the corpuscle downward. 
In the first place in order to be sure that 
we are dividing something, and not 



ACTUS DEI 43 

merely causing two somethings, not in 
contact, to move farther away from each 
other by some repeUing force, — as by 
heat, for instance, — we must assume that 
all parts of our corpuscle absolutely 
cohere,— that there is no space between 
them. 

Let us now attempt to disrupt it by 
pulling it asunder. We must get hold 
of it upon two opposite sides. The 
tools with which we do this must of 
necessity be smaller than our corpuscle. 
If we cleave it we must first devise a 
tool whose edge has a lateral dimension 
less than the corpuscle. If we explode 
it we must by some means put inside of 
it something smaller than itself It is 
readily seen that in each of these 
supposed experiments we must accom- 
plish our work before we begin it. In 
each of them we have been obliged to 
divide some other bit of matter as small 
as our corpuscle, in preparing the tool 



44 FINITE AND INFINITE 

or other means for conducting our ex- 
periment. We cannot deny what Fiske 
says, that our corpuscle must have "an 
upper side, an under side, a right side 
and a left side, or if it be spherical must 
have a periphery that is conceived as 
covering some assignable area." Yet 
we see that this does not necessarily 
imply its divisibility. On the contrary, 
we readily perceive that there must very 
soon come a point where further division 
is impossible for want of any possible 
means of continuing the process. 

From the beginning of metaphysical 
speculation to the present time, phil- 
osophy has too often failed to make this 
distinction between the respective values 
of inductive and deductive logic. De- 
ductive logic, like mathematics, belongs 
to the domain of the subjective, and, as 
Huxley said of the " mathematical mill," 
the results you get depend altogether 
upon what you put into it. Correct logic. 



ACTUS DEI 45 

based upon all the relevant facts, must 
always lead to truth. But if we begin 
with a half-truth, our logic, though abso- 
lutely faultless, will inevitably lead us to 
error. No one has succeeded better in 
illustrating this than Plato, in his "Par- 
menides." As Fiske tersely puts it : 

" In his first argument, Parmenides demonstrates 
that the One is neither in itself nor in anything 
else, neither at rest nor in motion, neither the 
same with itself nor different from itself In his 
second argument, he demonstrates that the One is 
both in itself and in other things, both at rest and 
in motion, both the same with itself and different 
from itself. That is, while his first demonstration 
denies both of two opposite and mutually destruc- 
tive propositions, his second affirms them both." 

A complete translation of the Par- 
menides dialogue will be found in the 
appendix. 

Philosophy will always lead us into 
error by deductive reasoning if its argu- 
ment be founded upon some half-truth. 



46 FINITE AND INFINITE 

or some wrong premise. When we 
started out to prove by logic that 
numbers are infinitely divisible, we er- 
roneously assumed the possibility of ex- 
panding, throughout an infinite Eternity, 
an effort which in its very nature must 
be finite. When we attempted to prove 
that matter is infinitely divisible we 
assumed the existence of means of con- 
ducting our experiment. Starting with 
wrong postulates we were logically led 
to false conclusions. When we started 
with the correct premises the opposite 
conclusions became at once obvious. In 
giving these two illustrations my purpose 
has been only to impress upon the 
reader the necessity of caution, when 
attempting to follow the arguments fre- 
quently found in metaphysical works. 
Make sure that the postulate is correct 
and omits nothing which it ought to con- 
tain. I am not to be understood as 
asserting that any one has claimed that 



ACTUS DEI 47 

the class of results we have been con- 
sidering are within human power, — or 
within the power of any finite intelli- 
gence. What I do complain of is the 
teaching that we are compelled to believe 
them possible at all, — possible to some 
'•Power" or "First Cause" or "Intelli- 
gence " working in some inscrutable way 
outside of, and contrary to, what we call 
Reason. We have no proof that this is 
so, and its nature precludes the possi- 
bility of proof, or of reaching a conclu- 
sion otherwise than through our reason- 
ing powers. Therefore we have no right 
to assume that because such task, or 
any other infinite task, can be conducted 
interminably by a Supreme Being whose 
existence is to endure forever, it can 
therefore be conducted eternally by him, 
or ever reach anything more than a finite 
result. There is no such thing as con- 
ducting any process eternally, for to 
conduct it eternally would be to con- 



48 FINITE AND INFINITE 

duct it to the end of time, and time 
has no end. So, when we prove that 
matter is not, by any conceivable means, 
divisible to any great extent, we have 
no rio-ht to assume that because we still 
have left something with sides or a 
periphery it must of necessity be further 
divisible by some Omnipotent Power. 

Finite results alone are possible. In- 
finite results are impossible, not to Man 
alone, but to God also, for a restdt is a 
finite thing and the finite cannot contain 
the infinite. An infinite result is a mere 
contradiction of terms, — like false-truth, 
loving-hatred, inert-motion, finite-eter- 
nity, infinite-person. There is no room 
for such absurdities in the Kingdom of 
God, which is a Kingdom of Law, Order, 
and Truth. 



CHAPTER V 

THE CONSTANCY OF PHENOMENA 

John Fiske's " Cosmic Philosophy" 
must be a surprise, in one way, to all 
who have previously read other exposi- 
tions. We are surprised to find how 
much easier we understand what he says 
than what others have said. I believe 
this is due, first, to the fact that his phi- 
losophy is the most reasonable and com- 
plete ; second, because he is the clearest 
thinker of them all. 

But none of them, not even Fiske, 
seems to have found the true relation 
between common-sense and philosophy. 
Reid tried to found a philosophy of 
common-sense, and failed because com- 
mon-sense is one thing, not everything. 
Viewed from a lawyer's stand-point, or 
with a lawyer's habits of thought and 

4 49 



50 FINITE AND INFINITE 

association of ideas, any one thing, a 
single science, for instance, bears the 
same relation to philosophy that a single 
evidential fact, produced upon the trial 
of an issue of fact, bears to the question 
at issue. A science, or any other one 
factor, say common-sense, will repre- 
sent a single evidential fact. Philosophy 
will stand for the whole case, — the single 
result of all the evidence. The opposing 
attorneys may disagree as to the credi- 
bility of witnesses, the significance of 
admitted facts, the sufficiency of portions 
of the evidence. Thus disagreeing they 
will differ in their inferences as to what 
the evidence means considered as a 
whole. So with philosophers. They 
may disagree as to the credibility of 
some of the evidence upon which a 
science is founded, or as to the suffi- 
ciency of certain facts to establish certain 
scientific conclusions, or, as is oftener 
the case, concerning the real mean- 



ACTUS DEI 51 

ing and significance of the admitted facts 
of science, and, so disagreeing, their 
philosophies will be unlike, for true 
philosophy is the lesson to be learned 
not from any one science or one thing, 
nor from any number of sciences or 
things less than the whole, but from a 
study, weighing, and comparison of all 
things known. 

Common-sense has its place in phi- 
losophy but is not itself a philosophy. 
Its chief usefulness in philosophy is in 
governing our mental attitude toward 
the facts themselves, the process of 
grouping and considering them, and the 
criticism of any result to which they 
seemingly lead. Common-sense, then, 
while not philosophy, must permeate 
from beginning to end any system of 
philosophy which is to be at all enduring. 

But what is common-sense? It is the 
consideration of questions not from the 
stand-point of the individual but from the 



52 FINITE AND INFINITE 

common experience of mankind. Now 
this seems to be where all systems of 
philosophy make the greatest failure. 
Take, for illustration, the wrangle be- 
tween those who affirm the existence of 
noumena and those who deny every- 
thing but phenomena. The common 
experience of mankind is ignored by 
both. The Idealist says, " I cannot 
affirm the existence of anything inde- 
pendent of my consciousness." The 
Positivist says, "True; but that does 
not prove your case." " But," retorts 
the Idealist, "do you affirm the exist- 
ence of anything apart from your con- 
sciousness ? " "No," is the answer, "I 
neither affirm nor deny it." Now there 
is too much " I " and " You " in all this 
to give it a speaking acquaintance with 
common-sense. Even Reid, the apostle 
of Common-sense Philosophy, seems 
not to have realized what common-sense 
really is, for if he had, he would not have 



ACTUS DEr 53 

suggested to Berkeley that if he wanted 
to find out whether, when he bumped his 
head against a lamp-post, he was bump- 
ing a real head against a real lamp-post, 
or an ideal head against an ideal lamp- 
post, he should do anything so illogi- 
cal and so far from common-sense as 
to try it upon himself. It would have 
been a common-sense suggestion to 
Berkeley to try It upon everybody that 
came alonij. It would not have been 
common-sense for Berkeley to follow 
that advice. If Berkeley were the only 
being on earth, and the only one who 
had ever been on earth, there might be 
excuse, of a sort, for his conclusion that 
inasmuch as his own consciousness was 
the only thing that gave him any knowl- 
edge on the subject, then his own con- 
sciousness was necessarily the only fact 
proved and therefore the lamp-post, as 
an actual factor of the equation, was 
eliminated. But the fact is that ever 



54 FINITE AND INFINITE 

since men have known how to express 
their states of consciousness they have 
always agreed with each other. If that 
lamp-post had stood there ever since 
the first dawn of human intellect, and it 
had been the fate of all who ever came 
into existence to bump their several 
heads against it, each would have had 
the same consciousness as to the shape, 
color, and rigidity of the thing bumped 
against, and the nature of the sensations 
following the collision. Bring every 
member of the human race separately 
to the dime-museum to look at " the only 
checkered horse in the world," and then 
take a photograph of it and show it to 
each separately and each will recognize 
it as what he saw. Ever since travellers 
began to travel in strange lands they 
have individually seen and been con- 
scious of the same things that all others 
have seen there. If one traveller should 
draw a picture of the leaning tower of 



ACTUS DEI 55 

Pisa as looking like a tree, another as 
looking like a water-fall, another as a 
triangle, another as a cow, and so on, 
we would know that thinofs are not what 
they seem, but the mere creatures of the 
individual consciousness of the observer. 
Perfect agreement of all the witnesses 
as to the shape, color, and sensible 
effects of an object which has come into 
their consciousness through the senses, 
is treated in law as the supremest test 
of provable truth. But the testimony of 
a million witnesses all agreeing that a 
certain tree which they all describe alike 
is growing in a place which they all 
locate alike, though no human being 
would be foolish enough to disbelieve it, 
would be slight indeed compared with 
the consensus of human opinion coming 
to us from the remotest ages, that rivers 
are rivers, that seas are seas, that moun- 
tains are mountains, that grass is grass, 
and trees are trees, that missiles and 



56 FINITE AND INFINITE 

weapons will wound and kill, not only 
men but brutes, that winds will blow and 
rains fall, that the sun shines by day and 
the moon and stars by night, and so on 
throughout all the countless phenomena 
of external nature. It is not the con- 
sciousness of the individual that should 
be called as a witness, but the conscious- 
ness of the whole human race every- 
where and always. 

Looking at external phenomena from 
this stand-point we find ourselves abso- 
lutely forced to accept one of two con- 
clusions, — either these phenomena pro- 
ceed from and are caused by actual 
objective realities, — noumena cognizable 
by the senses, — or there have been in- 
numerable multitudes of chance coin- 
cidences, whereby every one has hap- 
pened to think exactly as every one else 
has happened to think, and, further, that 
during all future ages every one will 
happen to think just as every one 



ACTUS DEI 57 

else happens to think now, and just as 
every one has always happened to think 
about these phenomena. This, being 
inconceivable, is not true according to 
any present system of philosophy. So 
that philosophy, though it tells us that 
the higrhest test of truth is absolute 
uniformity of experience, permits the 
Idealist, without even a protest, to assert, 
as a philosophical truth, that which is 
absolutely contrary to the uniform ex- 
perience of all people everywhere and 
during the whole period of human exist- 
ence. 

Mind, I do not mean to say that all 
philosophers deny the noumena. But 
there are too many of them willing to 
concede the claim of the Idealists that 
we can have no conscious knowledgre of 
noumena ; too many who, while willing 
to admit that the little red school-house 
with its bell clanging is surely something, 
still insist that it may be, and very likely 



58 FINITE AND INFINITE 

is, in its reality which they assume we 
can neither see nor hear, something 
entirely different from what phenom- 
enally it looks and sounds like. When 
philosophers concede this, what becomes 
of their experience test of truth ? If 
the experience be an illusion, how can it 
lead to truth ? Must not an illusion lead 
us to an illusion ? The absolute per- 
sistence of phenomena is the best proof 
that they tell us the truth, the whole 
truth, and nothing but the truth.* 

* See Appendix, title Noumena. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE FINITE AND THE INFINITE 

It is not without purpose that the 
Finite is given first place in the title to 
this chapter. We have, during a brief 
period, grown more or less accustomed, 
through altered religious teaching, to 
hearing the Infinite in extent and quan- 
tity spoken of as infinitely superior in 
every other aspect, as well as in bulk, 
to that which is Finite. 

But if we look about us, in Nature, 
we find every energy that is active 
directed to the segregation of portions 
of the Infinite, and changing these por- 
tions into more or less durable forms. 
Infinity has no form, because form means 
outline, and outline means the Finite. 
The infinite mass of matter is dead, 
futile, inefficient. When a part becomes 

59 



6o FINITE AND INFINITE 

separated from it, then, and not until 
then, is the beg-inningf of evolution. All 
that lives, all that contributes to life, all 
that is governed by Law, all that is en- 
dowed with Mind is finite in bulk. 

As to that which is infinite, no economy- 
is needed, as it can never by any process 
be increased or diminished. The infinite 
energies stored within it must ever re- 
main dormant, for radiant energy means 
motion, motion of anything means room 
outside of itself in which to move, and 
the Infinite leaves no space outside of 
itself "When I lift my hand I move 
the stars in Ursa Major," said a popular 
preacher. Possibly. But, granting that 
by moving his hand he disturbed the 
equilibrium in Ursa Major, he did a more 
wonderful thing in moving his hand, for 
he thereby imparted motion to the inert 
matter of his physical body, through his 
mental energy, — his will power. How- 
ever far this movement of his body 



ACTUS DEI 6 1 

might, through the law of gravitation, ex- 
tend to other regions of space, neither 
that nor any other finite motion, however 
great, could affect Infinity, Upon the 
outer confines of our sidereal universe 
what storms may come ! Even with the 
thin covering of atmosphere around our 
globe, temperature, motion, electricity, 
produce storms of such awful force that 
they appall us. Yet these are mere 
nothings compared with the primeval 
convulsions that took place when our 
atmosphere was a thousand miles deeper, 
in that long ago when the earth was 
beginning to cool. Eruptions have been 
photographed that took place upon the 
sun, lifting masses of matter to a height 
of 280,000 miles above the sun's surface. 
Yet what are these puny exhibitions of 
cosmic forces to what might occur if a 
strayed sun should plunge into the 
depths of the infinite mass, — into that 
farther beyond, surrounding the stars, 



62 FINITE AND INFINITE 

where room and storm-producing 
material are illimitable and unfathom- 
able ! Inconceivable quantities of gas, 
star-dust, — or whatever it may be, 
would ignite and explode in the wake of 
that plunging sun. The contrast of 
temperature between the burning and 
exploding gases, or clouds of matter, 
and the intense cold of the sidereal 
spaces into which they were forced, 
would create cyclonic disturbances pow- 
erful enough to toss and play with little 
planets like Jupiter as our earthly winds 
toy with grains of dust. But this would 
not disturb the Infinite. The vibrations 
caused in the neighborhood of these 
disturbances might impart themselves 
to other regions of matter, going on and 
on for countless aeons of time ; they 
would never disturb the Infinite ; they 
would never reach the Infinite. They 
would never affect anything but the 
Finite. The Infinite would ever and 



ACTUS DEI 63 

always lie beyond. However far, and 
long, these vibrations travelled, they 
would ever remain as far from the In- 
finite as when that universe-convulsing 
explosion took place. There ever lies 
beyond, an infinite mass of matter which 
finite disturbances, however vast, can 
never reach. All the energies exhibited 
in the finite universe are stored in this 
infinite mass, but they give no sign ; they 
have no sum-total, for a sum-total is a 
finite thing. It is only from the Finite 
that the energies of attraction, heat, 
light, electricity, are radiated. Infinity 
can exert no influence, for every in- 
fluence is a finite quantity that begins 
somewhere, and sometime, and though 
it may never end it can never reach the 
end ; therefore it must always remain 
finite. It is only through the Finite that 
anything can be done. The Finite is 
motion, evolution, progress ; the Infinite 
is stagnation awaiting the quickening 



64 FINITE AND INFINITE 

impulse of the Finite to arouse some 
portion of it into activity and life. The 
Finite may be of infinite duration ; it 
may have had no beginning, and may 
never end, for the Infinite contains in- 
finite possibilities, and is made up of an 
infinite number of finites ; as, for in- 
stance, matter, which is an infinite mass 
of finite corpuscles. But let us not go 
astray here. The Infinite contains no 
germ of the impossible, for there is that 
which is impossible in the absolute. In- 
finite space harbors no locality where 
twice two does not make four, where 
there are ranges of mountains without 
valleys, where the end will not be later 
than the beginning, where anything can 
be accomplished without the lapse of 
time, where falsehood is truth, and love 
is hate, where there is no difference be- 
tween heat and cold, light and darkness, 
motion and rest, where forms are with- 
out outline, where space can be con- 



ACTUS DEI 65 

densed or moved, where nothing is some- 
thino", where design and chance are the 
same thing, and produce the same effects. 
These wild incoherent imaginings have 
no place even in the Infinite, which 
only harbors the possible. 

Hence, although Jesus gave voice to 
a great truth when He said : "With God 
all things are possible," it is a truth that 
has often been foolishly interpreted to 
mean that the opposite thereof is also 
possible to Him, — that He can produce 
things from nonentities, unrealities, or 
perform any sort of absurdity. All 
things are possible, and all that is 
possible lies within His power, but when 
in our childish fancies we wander into 
the realm of the impossible, — that which 
is impossible absolutely, — we travel out- 
side of infinite space, — outside of God's 
Kingdom into a land of Nowhere : — a 
"Fool's Paradise." There we expect 
results contrary to Law, contrary to 
5 



66 FINITE AND INFINITE 

Truth, inconsistent with Reason. Some 
pray for such results, and, faiUng to 
secure them, humbly attribute their dis- 
appointment to lack of faith or of de- 
serving. Others who do not pray are 
equally disappointed, and "declare in 
their hearts that there is no God." And 
this is truth, for in that land of Nowhere 
there is neither God nor anything but 
the childish fancies of the ignorant. 
" God is in His heaven ;" God is in His 
Kingdom, looking with an infinite com- 
passion upon all who expect to find 
Him elsewhere. 



CHAPTER VII 

IDEAS OF GOD 

Belief in God seems to have been 
common among men many thousands of 
years ago. It is doubtless a very primi- 
tive idea. It was a familiar one when 
legends of remote antiquity took form. 
It is found in the lang-uagfe of that 
lost, or rather, widely assimilated race, 
the Aryans, whose primitive words 
are yet spoken by their descendants, the 
races of Europe, Persia, Afghanistan, 
Beluchistan, and Hindustan, and whose 
name for the Deity is still in common 
use among the Latin races. 

Primitive conceptions of God always 

took the form of Personality, This was 

then, as it still is, the only idea of God 

that can be grasped by the human mind. 

Modern philosophers who refuse it do 

67 



68 FINITE AND INFINITE 

not undertake to substitute anything 
for it. They call it the "Unknowable." 
"Inconceivable," etc. But, throughout 
all lands and in all ages, it has been 
observed that form and intellect are 
yoked together. Man has thus learned 
to associate them with each other. 
Hence the idea that God has form is 
still the belief of almost all who have 
any belief at all in God. To them He 
is a Being apart from nature, exerting 
an influence over nature, but not of it. 
Yet the earliest extant writings in 
languages long dead — Sanskrit and 
Greek — give evidence of another idea, — 
the Nature-God, — personified in the ele- 
ments, fire, air, and water, often divided 
into several Gods, making themselves 
manifest in light, heat, wind, rain-clouds, 
frost, lightning, and other natural phe- 
nomena. This idea has also survived to 
the present day, although less generally 
accepted than the other. 



ACTUS DEI 69 

Both ideas are still accepted by most 
people in their primitive forms, but 
among- a gradually increasing class — the 
educated — they will be found under 
phases more or less changed. The 
greatest variety of these changes have 
occurred in human conceptions concern- 
ing the Divine character ; but the most 
important change in every way is that 
which relates to the question, — one, or 
more than one God. And although 
Polytheism is still believed by many 
peoples, all who can justly claim to be civ- 
ilized, whether they believe in a Nature- 
God, or in a God outside of nature, 
have been converted to the monotheistic 
belief The latter class have found no 
difficulty in this change ; but the former 
have always encountered obstacles in 
reducing their creed to any simple and 
readily comprehensible form of words, 
and this embarrassment has grown with 
the advance of scientific discovery and 



70 FINITE AND INFINITE 

consequent modification of old views as 
to the real extent of nature. 

Xenophanes, a Greek philosopher, 
taught that there exists but one Entity, 
— God ; that all things are either parts 
of Him, acts done by Him, or illusions. 
But Xenophanes lived more than five 
centuries before the Christian era, and 
at that period scholarly notions of the 
universe of nature were quite finite and 
simple. From the view-point of his 
time there existed, chiefly the earth, and, 
surrounding this, an important yet com- 
paratively insignificant remnant of nature 
consisting of sun and moon, with a few 
stars which "wandered" and some 
thousands of stars that were attached 
by way of ornament to the revolving 
vault above. With such an idea of 
nature, nature could be God and God 
nevertheless a comprehensible Person- 
ality. Later the Nature-God idea de- 
veloped into its three present forms, all 



ACTUS DEI 71 

classed under the generic title of Mon- 
ism. These are : 

1. Idealism, holding that phenomena 
both spiritual and material are from 
Spirit. 

2. Pure Pantheism, holding that both 
matter and mind are illusions, and noth- 
ing really exists but God. 

3. Materialistic Monism,, which holds 
that all phenomena both material and 
spiritual are from matter. 

The several results of these ideas 
vary, in that the first leaves room for 
belief in God and human immortality ; 
the second admits of belief in God, but 
not in immortality; while the third forbids 
either belief, and is a striking instance 
of utter antagonism between the seed 
and the fruit grown from it. It is no 
longer an idea of God in any form, but 
is the reverse. Monism is the belief 
that all phenomena must in the last 
analysis be traced to some one cause ; 



72 FINITE AND INFINITE 

as all three of these ideas are of that 
character, — assigning as the ultimate 
source of all phenomena the respective 
causes, Spirit, God, Matter, — it is correct 
to class them all as Monistic beliefs. 

Among the early Christians the ideas 
of the school of Idealistic Pantheism, 
which was a great moral force among 
the Greeks of that day, gained some 
headway, the result of which was the 
Athanasian Christian sect. Later, how- 
ever, it was suppressed, and thereafter 
it never gained a foothold of any con- 
sequence among Christians until the 
present generation. Now, however, 
Monistic ideas are making great head- 
way among Protestant Christians. Some 
celebrated and worthy ministers have 
declared their adherence to the doctrines 
of Idealistic Pantheism, although they, 
for some unuttered reason, choose to 
give it some other name if they give it 
any, which they do not always. The 



ACTUS DEI 73 

views of such men have been limpingly 
followed by constantly increasing num- 
bers of graduates of theological schools 
who appear to have only a vague com- 
prehension of the Idealistic Philosophy 
or its ethical or moral import, and occa- 
sionally voice, in their pulpits, their 
cloudy ideas in such wise as to sow 
doubts in the minds of their hearers, 
without having any realizing sense of 
the effect their words may have, and 
without sufficient knowledge of the sub- 
ject to remove the doubts if they become 
aware of them, I have often met people 
who could glibly declare their belief in 
God and their disbelief that He is a 
person. This expression of opinion, for 
which in most cases its holders could 
give no reason when pressed for one, 
was a fashion until quite recently. It is 
now dying out ; even the Idealists are 
abandoning it, for, as Fiske says, 
'Through Nature to God," p. i66, "The 



74 FINITE AND INFINITE 

Human Soul knows better ; it knows at 
least what it wants, and resists all such 
attempts to palm off upon it stones for 
bread"; and the same author says, " Idea 
of God," p. 135, "The total elimination 
of anthropomorphism from the idea of 
God abolishes the idea itself." 

It will readily be seen, from what has 
already been said, that no other form of 
Monism than that known as Idealistic 
Pantheism could ever gain headway 
amonsf Christians. The pfreatest mod- 
ern teachers of this idea have been the 
Germans, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel ; 
the Irishman, Bishop Berkeley ; and the 
Americans, Ralph Waldo Emerson and 
John Fiske. With constantly enlarging 
ideas of the extent of matter crowding 
upon them from the developments of 
modern science, the Idealists at last 
found themselves confronted with a 
volume of matter which seems to be 
infinite in extent, so that if nature is co- 



ACTUS DEI 75 

extensive with matter, a Nature-God 
must be immanent and omnipresent 
throughout infinite space, and the idea 
of His personaHty must be given up, 
for the Infinite has no boundary, and so 
can possess neither form nor outline, 
which are intuitively recognized by the 
human mind as inseparable from person- 
ality. The idea of God was quite logic- 
ally, and necessarily, relegated to the 
"Unknowable," "Unthinkable," "Incon- 
ceivable," "Incomprehensible," and so 
on ; each exponent of Idealism recog- 
nizing that no name conveying an idea 
could be given to that which is un- 
imaginable. Fiske's faith in God was 
too strong and virile to admit this. He 
rebelled, and taught an Idealism differ- 
ent from all others. He followed the 
old teaching to the point where his clear, 
logical, common-sense mind realized 
that if he went farther he must give up 
the idea of God altogether. There he 



76 FINITE AND INFINITE 

drew the line. Perhaps his effort to de- 
fend his idea of an Infinite Personality 
is not very satisfactory. But that is out- 
side the scope of the present chapter, 
and will be referred to more at large 
hereafter. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE SPACIAL IDEA OF GOD 

I WOULD be glad to tell my readers 
just when and how the habit of attribu- 
ting spacial infinity to God crept into 
Christian teaching. But I have not been 
able to find out. Certain it is, however, 
that no warrant exists for it in either 
Old or New Testament. There is one 
passage of Scripture where the adjective 
"infinite" is used in connection with the 
Deity, — Psalm cxlvii, verse 5, " Great is 
our Lord and of great power ; his under- 
standing is infinite." I hope presently 
to show that the adjective "infinite," 
applied to God's understanding, makes 
a very different sense of infinity than it 
will when applied in the spacial sense. 
The human mind has an intuitive percep- 
tion of the truth that space is unlimited in 

77 



78 FINITE AND INFINITE 

extent. We are told that space has 
three dimensions, — length, breadth, thick- 
ness. This, however, is only true as to 
portions of space, not as to space itself. 
It is simply impossible to imagine a 
boundary beyond which there exists no 
space. To say that space is infinite 
really adds nothing to the meaning of 
the word space, nor to the mind's intui- 
tive conception of it. We are told some- 
times that infinite space cannot be coin- 
prehended. No self-evident truth can be 
comprehended. We cannot compre- 
hend our own existence, or our own con- 
sciousness as to anything. We do not 
need to comprehend this class of facts, 
because being obvious in the most abso- 
lute sense we ask for nothingf more. We 
cannot comprehend that space is not in- 
finite, because we are conscious, intui- 
tively, that the statement is false. So 
with Time. We intuitively know that 
there never was a past which did not 



ACTUS DEI 79 

have its yesterday, and will never be a 
future without its to-morrow ; for we are 
conscious, without being taught, that 
time is also one of those things the 
nature of which forbids beginning or 
ending. There have been casuists who, 
whether they believed themselves or not, 
attempted to prove that neither time nor 
space exist, but no one has been foolish 
enough to argue that, conceding their 
existence, there could be limit to either. 
As to things that can be compre- 
hended, they must first be reasoned. 
But as to truths that are self-evident, 
reason has nothing to do with them, nor 
has comprehension. Yet they are as 
obviously true without reason or com- 
prehension as truths discovered by in- 
duction or deduction, which can be 
comprehended and explained. We know 
that we exist to-day ; that we existed 
yesterday ; that there are such facts as 
Life, Time, Space. It is impossible for 



8o FINITE AND INFINITE 

us to know anything better than we 
know these thing-s. This is absolute 
knowledge ; yet we never learned it ; we 
know it because it has been in our con- 
sciousness during all our conscious ex- 
istence. But we cannot comprehend 
this knowledge. As Sir Wm. Hamilton, 
a Scotch metaphysician and philosopher 
of the last century, says, in his notes 
upon Reid's Philosophy of Common- 
Sense: "It will argue nothing against 
the trustworthiness of Consciousness 
that all or any of its deliverances are 
inexplicable or incomprehensible. To 
make the comprehensibility of a datum 
of Consciousness a criterion of its truth 
would be, indeed, the climax of ab- 
surdity." 

And Fiske speaks to the same pur- 
pose when he says : " It is indeed a 
popular misconception, — a misconcep- 
tion which lies at the bottom of that 
manner of philosophizing which is called 



ACTUS DEI 8 I 

Empiricism, — that nothing can be known 
to be true which cannot be demon- 
strated." And Fiske goes on to prove 
the absurdity of that idea, and the utter 
impossibihty of demonstrating " self- 
evident " truths, as he calls them, — being 
the same class of truths which Spencer 
describes as " universal and unchanging 
facts." (I " Cosmic Philosophy," Chap. 

If the human mind possessed intuitive 
consciousness of the spacial infinity of 
God we should not be troubled by our 
failure to comprehend the idea. It would 
be accepted as other self-evident facts. 
But, in normal minds consciousness 
never contradicts the truths of ex- 
perience, or the orderly course of nature, 
and so, when we have learned that cer- 
tain rules apply to certain conditions in 
one realm of nature, we expect to find 
the same rules in force wherever the 
same conditions exist. In other words, 

6 



82 FINITE AND INFINITE 

we are conscious that what is truth here 
and to-day is truth everywhere and 
always. Therefore, having learned that, 
throughout terrestrial nature, the power 
to act and move, and the ability to im- 
part knowledge or motion to persons 
and things, are invariable attributes of 
the Finite, our consciousness forbids us 
from accepting belief that the Infinite 
can have any of these virtues, or that it 
can impart to others what it does not 
itself possess. The qualities of fixed- 
ness, inactivity, immobility, belong to 
infinite space, and so they necessarily 
belong to everything that is spacially 
infinite. Within space, finite forms and 
personalities are possible, and they may 
move, exert force, and accomplish results 
within space, but not throughout space. 
If God filled all .space. He would be in- 
ert, immovable, devoid of power, under- 
standing, will, or any quality that is 
found in the spacially finite. He would 



ACTUS DEI 83 

not be the " Supreme Being." He 
would not be a Being at all, and could 
not be, for an impersonal being is a mere 
contradiction of terms which annuls itself, 
and is therefore intuitively rejected by 
the human consciousness. Personality 
and Infinity, considered spacially, can- 
not exist together, for the one is com- 
pelled to have form and outline while 
the other cannot possibly possess either. 
But if we are unable to believe that 
God is of infinite proportions ; if we 
cannot imagine anything spacially in- 
finite as possessing intelligence or the 
power to move or impart motion, we 
can be satisfied with the Scriptural decla- 
ration, *' Great is our Lord and of great 
power." And we can readily accept 
the Psalmist's declaration, " His under- 
standing is infinite ;" for that is quite 
another thing, as we shall see. It will 
be apparent that if matter does not fill 
infinite space, nature can never be co- 



84 FINITE AND INFINITE 

extensive with space and must therefore 
be always a finite quantity, so that a 
Nature-God would of necessity be also 
a finite Being, and must ever remain 
finite, because we know that what is not 
now spacially infinite never can become 
so. Whether matter be spacially infinite 
or not we can never know. But that 
such is the belief of scientists and that 
there are convincing reasons for such 
belief will be shown in another place. 
However, if matter be not spacially in- 
finite, then God, if He be a Nature-God, 
is spacially finite, for nature cannot exist 
where matter does not exist. 

Again, if we shall be compelled to 
believe that matter is spacially infinite, 
but that the region of space is finite 
wherein matter exhibits those varied 
forms, motions and phenomena, known 
in their totality as the universe, or nature, 
then the God of Idealistic Pantheism is 
of necessity a finite Being, for He exists 



ACTUS DEI 85 

only in and throughout nature, and 
nature being now finite can never be- 
come infinite. 

But, again, if we conceive of primary 
matter as filling infinite space, the com- 
binations under which its corpuscles can 
now assume the forms known to the 
chemist as atoms and compounds are a 
finite number. In other words, the prop- 
erties of primal matter, — its possibilities 
of adaptation and use, comprise only a 
finite number, all of which God under- 
stands. And, understanding what can 
be done with matter in a finite part of 
space. He understands what can be done 
with it everywhere ; and what He has 
power to do with matter in the finite 
universe He has power to do with it every- 
where ; therefore "His understanding is 
infinite," and not only that, but His 
power is infinite. Thus we see that a 
spacially finite God can possess infinite 
knowledge and infinite power, and that 



86 FINITE AND INFINITE 

nothing but the spacially finite can pos- 
sess any knowledge or power whatever. 
God then is the Supreme Being ; His 
task is an infinite task ; His workshop 
infinite Space ; His work-day Eternity. 



CHAPTER IX 

AN IDEALISTIC DILEMMA 

As will be shown in Part II. of this 
book, the strong tendency of opinion in 
the field of astro-physical science is 
toward a belief that the sidereal system 
is of finite dimensions. As the famous 
astronomer, Miss A. M. Gierke of Dub- 
lin, states it : "The probability amounts 
almost to a certainty that star-strewn 
space is of measurable dimensions." 
In Part II. will also be presented the 
argument of logic in support of the same 
conclusion, — that any effort which mani- 
fests itself in the changing of portions 
of infinite quantities to finite forms can- 
not possibly attain more than a finite 
result at any period of time. Should 
this become the doctrine of Science, as 
now seems likely, what effect will it have 

87 



88 FINITE AND INFINITE 

upon the Idealistic conception of the 
Deity ? Assuredly there will be but two 
alternatives : either Idealists will be at 
war with Science, or they will return to the 
old Greek Nature-God, who, inasmuch 
as Nature presented a finite quantity to 
the conception of the Greeks, was nec- 
essarily a finite Being spacially. While 
this would remove the difficulty of an 
inconceivable, spacially-infinite person- 
ality, it would necessitate an entire 
change of front. For the fundamental 
credal tenet of Idealism is, as expressed 
in December, 1904, by a noted American 
clergyman, " I believe in a God who 
is in and through and of everything!' 
This is the corner-stone of Idealistic 
Pantheism. And it is not interpreted 
by Idealists as being a mere figure of 
speech, but as stating the actual fact 
believed. There is a tree ; it is a part of 
God ; a cow, a dwelling, a church, a 
saloon, a school, a brothel, a bayonet, a 



ACTUS DEI 89 

gambling device, a prayer, a curse, a 
glass of whiskey, a loaf of bread : all 
parts of God. A kindly soul devoting 
life to helping mankind ; a cruel mind 
planning murder ; a stock gambler plot- 
ting wholesale robbery ; a trust magnate 
devising a scheme of extortion ; the 
chief executive of a nation trying to 
prevent injustice ; God is in and through 
and of them all. Well, while the prop- 
osition is inconceivable and unthinkable, 
that God was in the murderer's mind 
planning that murder, or in the mind of 
that wholesale robber helping him to 
work out his iniquity, suppose neverthe- 
less we grant it. What is the result? 
Is God in and of and through all matter 
throughout infinite space, or is He only 
in and through and of that portion of 
matter which has been taken from the 
infinite mass and changfed into finite 
forms ? If infinite space were filled with 
those things which the Idealist is so fond 



90 FINITE AND INFINITE 

of referring to as "manifestations of 
His all-pervading presence,''' that would 
be one thing. But if only a part or 
parts of space contain these evidences 
of the presence of this Idealistic Deity, 
is He also present throughout that in- 
finite stagnant mass where there are no 
such "evidences of His presence"? If 
He is only present where those evi- 
dences of His presence exist then He 
will assuredly grow larger as the bounds 
of nature become extended. Carlyle 
once let drop a bon-mot about an absen- 
tee God sitting idle on the edge of His 
universe ever since He created it, and 
watching the wheels go round. Ever 
since then Idealists have shaken in our 
faces the "Absentee-God" bogey. The 
Idealist is falsifying our position. We 
believe, every whit as much as he, 
that God's influence is constantly active. 
We do not believe it is necessary for 
God to be actually present in order to 



ACTUS DEI 91 

accomplish His work. Perhaps if the 
Rev. Lyman Abbott chooses to ridicule 
the almost universal Christian idea of 
God, by echoing Carlyle's shallow witti- 
cism about an "Absentee-God," he will 
not object to being paid in his own kind 
by a few questions relative to the Ideal- 
istic Joss. It really seems to be a Joss 
very far from having the infinite power 
ascribed to Him, for He seems able to 
act only where He is present. It is a 
Joss with less radiating force than a 
twenty-first magnitude star, — yea, less 
than the bits of nebulae which send their 
lights to us from the outer confines of 
stellar space, — even less than the impal- 
pable dust particles of a comet's tail 
which send their infinitesimal reflected 
rays to us from beyond the sun. 

There has always been revolt, both 
among philosophers and astronomers, 
against the idea prevalent among physi- 
cists, that there can be no such thing in 



92 FINITE AND INFINITE 

the physical universe as "action at a 
distance." It was first pretty thoroughly 
punctured by Fiske, as will be shown in 
a subsequent chapter, and is now being 
seriously questioned among the physi- 
cists themselves. " Can a thing act 
where it is not?" No one, however, 
denies that this action at a distance 
takes place ; but to get over the difficulty 
by supposing an intervening ether, "as 
rigid as a diamond, yet impalpable," is 
like jumping out of the frying-pan of 
mystery into the fire of inconceivability. 
Whatever may be the explanation, there 
Is some means by which light travels, 
and the energy of attraction. Could 
not this Idealistic Joss do as much ? No. 
He must be "in all, and of all, and 
through all," He cannot act where He 
is not present. Thus we have a con- 
venient physical fiction erected into a 
spiritual reality, through a process of 
idealistic dreaming. And really the 



ACTUS DEI 93 

Idealists have not added any dignity to 
the conception of God by increasing 
His size so that He may be actually 
present everywhere throughout creation, 
if creation is finite ; for, in the first place, 
that sort of size — spacial size — does 
not suggest increased mental or spir- 
itual power, and, in the second place, if 
it did, there would be still, outside of 
any place where this God of the Idealists 
has " manifested His presence by His 
works," an infinite space where He is 
not, and where He never can be until 
infinite space becomes finite. And if the 
Idealists do not choose to take that posi- 
tion, but think it better to change their 
behef to a God who is "in all, and 
through all, and of all," but only "mani- 
fested" in a finite part of space, have 
they given to the world anything worth 
while ? They have given us the incon- 
ceivable idea of a God who is infinitely 
idle and finitely busy. 



CHAPTER X 



ACTUS DEI 



"The act of God" is a phrase often 
met with in the jurisprudence of the 
common law. Bouvier defines it as 
" Any accident due to natural causes 
directly, and without human interven- 
tion." Another writer says, "The term 
applies broadly to natural accidents, 
such as those caused by lightning, earth- 
quakes, and tempests." Actus Dei nend- 
nifacit injuriani is a maxim of the com- 
mon law, and its legal import is that no 
person will be held liable for a default 
in his contract occasioned by the "act 
of God," unless the contract expressly 
imposes that liability. However, it is 
not with the maxim itself that we have 
to do in the present chapter, but with 
the underlying idea which ascribes to a 

94 



ACTUS DEI 95 

Divine Providence all accidents due to 
the inherent properties of matter. For 
John has handed down to us the wise 
teaching that " All things were made by 
Him, and without Him was not anything 
made that was made ; " and this has been 
imprudently interpreted to mean that 
God not only made all things which are, 
but that He produced, or caused, the in- 
finite mass of matter from which things, 
i.e., forms, have been made. 

It was not in the yEneid, nor the 
Odyssey, that the gods first loosed the 
winds or calmed the waves. The remote 
antiquity of those classics is modern in- 
deed compared with that far-away day 
when the prototypes of ^olus and Nep- 
tune, and their kindred nature-gods, 
first took the form of ideas in some reve- 
rent mind. The belief that natural acci- 
dents are due to spiritual agencies 
pervades all literature, and all theologies, 
living and dead, and is as prevalent to- 



96 FINITE AND INFINITE 

day among people, civilized and uncivil- 
ized, as it ever was. Dissent there has 
been from it, in a way, among both 
ancient and modern theologians, but un- 
fortunately this dissent has never under- 
taken, except in a very few minds, to 
reconcile the obvious fact of natural evil 
with belief in a benevolent God. The 
vast majority of the dissenters have been 
content to attribute natural evils to an 
evil spirit, the enemy of God and man, 
or to treat them as punishments inflicted 
upon evil-doers, by a just king, or if 
neither of these alternatives suited the 
facts in the case, or the moral conscious- 
ness of man, the matter was catalogued 
as one of "The inscrutable ways of 
Providence." 

A recent writer, a man possessed of 
brilliant qualities of mind, and of the 
most kindly impulses, but withal having 
narrow prejudices, and lacking deep re- 
search, epitomizes what has been, per- 



ACTUS DEI 97 

haps, with the masses in Christian lands, 
the most seductive argument of Atheism. 
He says: "An Almighty Friend who 
cares nothing for us, who allows us to 
be stricken by His lightning, frozen by 
His winter, starved by His famine, is a 
friend I do not care to have." The re- 
ligion of Jesus Christ, humane and sym- 
pathetic beyond all others, when gathered 
in its pristine purity from the Gospels, 
tends to develop a spirit vulnerable to 
this form of argument. We see earth- 
quakes, thunderbolts, winds, waves, heat, 
cold, deluges and drought, bringing in- 
jury, disease, and death to the just and 
unjust, the careful and negligent, the 
wise and igfnorant. We know that man 
has no power to guard himself absolutely 
against any of these dangers, and that 
in the face of some of them he is utterly 
helpless. Are these the acts of God? 
Have not these natural evils been dis- 
appearing from the world ? Are they 

7 



98 FINITE AND INFINITE 

not trivial indeed compared with what 
they were in earher stages of evolution ? 
Geological research leaves us no oppor- 
tunity to question this fact. 

What has caused their gradual elimi- 
nation ? Who is responsible for that ? 
Did God do both these thinofs ? Did He 
first bring natural evil into the world 
purposely, and then, repenting, proceed 
to take it out of the world again ? 

Let me say that Idealism has never 
answered, or attempted to answer, that 
question. And however much Idealism 
may refine terms and attempt to satisfy 
us by discriminations between the Finite 
and the Infinite, it will never give us 
anything as good as the human God of 
the Old Testament, until it does tell us 
why its God brought evil into the world 
and then proceeded to eradicate it. And 
I do not refer to natural evil alone. That 
is used as an illustration because it is the 
most obvious and tangible. But there is 



ACTUS DEI 99 

the evil In the human mind ; and this is 
as much greater than the other as mind 
is greater than matter. It is also, per- 
mit me the liberty of thanking God for 
the fact, disappearing. Men are better 
than brutes, and men of to-day in civil- 
ized countries average better than sav- 
ages, and the civilized man Is increasing, 
the savage disappearing ; and among 
civilized men there are those whom all 
instinctively recognize as higher types of 
humanity. The world Is growing better. 
The world is getting rid of evil, both 
natural and moral. The process is slow, 
but it is sure, because it is evolution, 
and evolution is one of those things 
which can never end. Who is doing 
this ? Are the evil and the destruction 
of the evil traceable to the same source ? 
Let Idealism give us an answer, — a plain 
answer, — one that is not beclouded by 
metaphysical fog, and we will accord it 
credit for a philosophy worth while. 



loo FINITE AND INFINITE 

"God is the creator of evil" is the 
bold assertion of John Fiske : "Through 
Nature to God," chapter vi., page 38. 

Fiske was in many respects a wonder- 
ful man, — a man of deepest conviction, 
sublimest courage to face the truths of 
science, whatever they might be, and a 
man whose faith in God and His good- 
ness, and even in His personality, was 
inextinguishable. Have there not been 
other men of whom as much can be said ? 
Yes, many of them ; and it is not in these 
respects that Fiske was unique, but 
because he could retain these ideas while 
imbued deeply with Idealistic philosophy. 
He never shirked the inexorable logic 
of the Idealistic scheme. If God was the 
source of all, then certainly He was the 
source of evil, and all that remained was 
to show a valid excuse for it. But when 
it came to that, Fiske was weak ; an in- 
tellectual giant, he failed, simply because 
the task was impossible. The reader 



ACTUS DEI loi 

will, I hope, procure the book referred 
to and judge for himself whether I state 
the argument fairly, and whether it is 
not true that his analysis of the origin of 
evil runs counter to the very foundations 
of the philosophy which he defended. 

Fiske's argument begins very simply: 
without contrast there can be no con- 
scious life ; if there were no color but red 
it would be as if there were no color at 
all ; if everything tasted like sugar, there 
would be no such thing as taste. If there 
were no such thing as pain, we could not 
recognize physical pleasure, and there- 
fore it would not exist. If this were a 
sinless world, we could not be conscious 
of goodness or morality any more than 
we are of the pressure of the atmosphere 
which is always upon our bodies. Con- 
sequently in a happy world there must 
be both sorrow and pain, and in a moral 
world the knowledge of evil is indispen- 
sable. This is all true, of course, but it 



I02 FINITE AND INFINITE 

suggests a limitation of God's power, — 
the very thing Fiske was trying to avoid. 
And it does not prove that God created 
evil. Let us see if it does. If God 
created evil, then there was a time before 
Its creation when evil did not exist, con- 
sequently good did not exist. But if 
God created these things. He existed 
eternally before them, and, as neither can 
exist alone in any consciousness, they 
must have been brought Into existence 
simultaneously by a being who lived 
eternally without conscious knowledge 
of either. 

Now let us see where we are. First, 
we have an eternity during which these 
two things, good and evil, which com- 
prise the sum total of all Ideas, and which 
the Idealist tells us cannot exist outside 
of consciousness, did not exist, for God 
had not yet created either of them. Will 
the Idealist give us some sort of idea of 
anything that God could have been dur- 



ACTUS DEI 103 

ing that eternity before good or evil came 
into existence ? A God living eternally 
without knowledge of good or evil ! Are 
we witnessing- a revised edition of the 
Eden drama, — the Tree of Knowledge 
of Good and Evil, with God in the role 
of Adam ? 

But having entered this storehouse of 
incono-ruities let us see what else there 
may be. This God of Idealism having 
created good and evil, we must be in- 
formed why it was done. We have 
already been told that neither of them 
can exist consciously without the other. 
Well, what is the meaning of that ad- 
verb "consciously"? As they are pure 
ideas they cannot exist at all unless they 
exist consciously. Now, did the God of 
Idealism plmi what use He would make 
of good and evil before they existed ? 
Impossible. A plan about something 
not existing, even in consciousness, is 
inconceivable. Yet that is just where 



I04 FINITE AND INFINITE 

Idealism brings us : to this inconceivable 
conception, this unthinkable thought. 
Why does Idealism bring us here ? Sim- 
ply to prove that there are no limitations 
to God's power, — that nothing exists ex- 
cept what He has caused or made. And 
yet the very first postulate of this argu- 
ment of IdeaHsm is an absolute and in- 
finite limitation of the power of God, 
namely, that He could not create a happy 
world without sorrow and pain, nor a 
moral world without evil. Nor do I 
gainsay this, for my own argument is 
founded upon the distinction between 
the possible and the impossible, between 
things and nothings. But I mention the 
fact that Idealism thus limits God's 
power in order to show how utterly it 
fails in its attempt to devise a system of 
theology which makes Him the cause and 
source of all things. Thus IdeaHsm, not 
satisfied with putting the cart before the 
horse, smashes both horse and cart into 



ACTUS DEI 105 

an inextricable and useless mass, and, in 
the "confusion worse confounded" which 
it has produced, asks us to find and be- 
lieve in a God who lived eternally with- 
out knowledge of good and evil, whose 
power is unlimited yet infinitely limited, 
who made a plan about good and evil 
before they existed in His consciousness, 
and who, although He created evil, dis- 
likes it, and is destroying it. Is this a 
philosophy ? Is it not, rather, a maze of 
empirical absurdities ? Is it not more 
reasonable to believe that both evil and 
good are eternal ideas, coeval with God; 
that He always hated the evil and always 
loved the good ? Where was the evil if 
not in Him ? How did it exist if not 
through Him ? I make only this reply 
now. It has never been claimed even 
by Idealism that God created time or 
space. If there be some things that He 
did not create, why not others ? Is it not 
more reasonable to believe that moral 



io6 FINITE AND INFINITE 

ideas are eternal than to attempt to ex- 
plain evil and good in the way we have 
Just witnessed ? Is it not better to follow 
reason than chimera ? We intuitively 
know that a good Supreme Being would 
not bring a bad thing into existence ; we 
know that if God is wise He will not be 
found destroying His own work, having 
found it foolish or wrong. We are abso- 
lutely compelled therefore to absolve 
Him from the charge that He created 
evil, for no class of Theists will be more 
ready than the Idealists to admit that He 
is infinitely wise and good. This answer 
of Fiske will never do. It contradicts 
reason, and has not even the poor ex- 
cuse of necessity, for there is surely no 
case of mental duress here which drives 
us to assume that God created evil be- 
cause there is no other possible way of 
accounting for it. The Idealistic process 
of approaching the beginning of things 
has never been carried by its advocates 



ACTUS DEI 107 

to its deepest logical conclusions, else we 
should have been told that God created 
time and space after first creating Him- 
self. God is self-existent, and the fact 
of self-existence being- conceded in one 
instance, the mind finds no difficulty in 
conceiving it as to others. Impossibility 
has relation to the nature of things, not 
to numbers of instances. 

Phenomena may be traced to second- 
ary causes, and therefore man may be 
encouraged in attempting to find more 
remote causes. But Space, Time, Matter, 
Truth, Falsehood, Love, Hate, Good, 
Evil, Mind, Spirit, Life, are not phenom- 
ena. They are eternal realities where- 
with God has power to do all things. 
He cannot do with them that which is 
impossible in the absolute sense ; for 
example, He cannot change them into 
one another or destroy them. But He 
can change them into finite forms and 
personalities, and endow these with the 



io8 FINITE AND INFINITE 

blessings of growth and evolution. This 
He has done, and is doing. His mate- 
rials, though finite as to kinds, are infinite 
in quantity. His understanding com- 
prises a perfect knowledge of all things, 
and is therefore infinite. His time is 
infinite, His work will never end. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE STORY OF CYCLONE SMITH 

Shall I tell my readers of the pitiful 
experience of Mr. Smith, of Kansas ? It 
is only a parable, but perhaps it may 
give a clearer idea of the mental dilemma 
into which this poor humanity of ours 
that craves, more than all else, a con- 
scious immortality in the friendship and 
kinship of an everlasting, all-wise, and 
loving God-Father, has been led by di- 
vers metaphysical and theological explor- 
ers who have called out, " Lo, here!" 
"Lo, there!" 

Mr. Smith was an honest man, a good 
man who loved his neighbor. Conse- 
quently, having never had a "streak of 
luck" or a "windfall," he did not become 
suddenly rich. But by many years of 

patient and loving toil he had managed 

109 



no FINITE AND INFINITE 

to build and furnish a comfortable and 
pleasant home for himself and his family ; 
and aside from good health, bodily vigor, 
and a clear conscience, this home was 
about all Smith had. One day, Smith 
saw something which induced him to 
hustle his family into the cyclone cellar, 
and scarcely had he got them there be- 
fore the air outside was filled with a tre- 
mendous Babel of most frightful noises. 
It soon receded, gradually growing faint- 
er ; Smith peeked out ; his house and all 
that was in it had disappeared. 

Smith believed he did not deserve 
this, but he had heard about such things 
as "visitations of Providence," and was 
worried. He went bravely to work to 
begin life anew, but from time to time, 
and as opportunity offered, he sought 
information from his fellow-men, hoping 
to clear up the mystery, for it puzzled 
him sorely. From his persistency upon 
this subject, he finally obtained the title 



ACTUS DEI III 

of "Cyclone" Smith. Most people with 
whom he conversed on the subjectseemed 
to have about the same sort of idea of 
God ; but when they came to an opinion 
as to why the cyclone had visited him, 
their views varied so widely that he 
could readily discern they knew as little 
about the matter as he did. As time 
passed on and his courage and labor 
were rewarded by prosperity, business 
took him to a large city wherein dwelt 
many wise and learned men, and he de- 
termined to renew his quest among them 
for a solution of the riddle. 

The first of the Solons interviewed by 
Smith was a Pantheist, and, after the 
case was stated to him, that gentleman 
delivered himself in these words : " Mr. 
Smith, God is the cause of everything 
good, but nothing evil, for evil is a mere 
delusion, and does not exist, except in 
the mind. Now, as I understand your 
story, this cyclone you tell me of was an 



112 FINITE AND INFINITE 

unmixed evil ; therefore it was all an 
illusion. Good-day, sir. I beg pardon, 
but I am very busy to-day." 

When Smith reached the sidewalk he 
met a citizen of the place and inquired, 
" Stranger, I beg your pardon, but can 
you tell me is this house here a private 
lunatic asylum, or something of the sort?" 
"Why, no," said the stranger, whose 
face expressed great surprise at the 
question ; "that is the residence of Pro- 
fessor Gnough of the Kershago Univer- 
sity." 

" Is Professor Gnough a slim-built, 
medium-sized man, say about forty years 
old, with a goatee, hair streaked with 
gray, who wears gold spectacles?" in- 
quired Smith. 

"Exactly so," replied the stranger, 
with a more puzzled look than before. 

"Thank you, sir," said Smith, and 
walked on. 

The stranger looked after him awhile, 



ACTUS DEI 113 

and then, suddenly seeming to make up 
his mind about something, ran up the 
professor's front steps, rang the bell, and 
was admitted. Smith continued his walk. 
He had another Solon on his list. This 
gentleman seemed amused. " Why," 
said he, "what would you have, Mr. 
Smith ? Matter is the source and first 
cause of everything, but matter has no 
conscience, no reason, no feeling, and 
here you are expecting it to act benevo- 
lently and justly." ' 

" But," replied Smith, "if matter is the 
cause of everything, it is the cause of 
you and me ; and if it have no conscience, 
benevolence, or sense of justice, how 
did it impart those qualities to us?" 

"Well," answered the materialist, 
"your question assumes an error as its 
basis. It is true that matter cannot im- 
part qualities that it does not possess, 
but conscience, benevolence, and such 
like, are not, strictly speaking, qualities; 



VV 



114 FINITE AND INFINITE 

they are mere evolutions from the me- 
chanical responses of one chemical to 
the stimulus of another chemical," The 
gentleman warmed up. "Here," said 
he, " come into my laboratory and have 
a look at my actinian. I will show you 
how those mental manifestations have 
slowly evolved from instinct, and how 
instinct has been slowly evolved from 
the mere attractions and repulsions of 
different chemicals. When you see my 
actinian, you will declare that it thinks, 
that it acts intelligently, yet it is only a 
vegetable." 

Mr. Smith was interested by the be- 
havior of the actinian, and, thanking its 
owner, discouragedly took his leave, — 
not altogether without hope, for there 
was one more wise man to be inter- 
viewed, the celebrated divine, Soanso, 

'T am heartily sorry for your misfor- 
tune," said Rev. Soanso, after hearing 
the story. "You certainly have no call 



ACTUS DEI IIS 

to regard it as a visitation of Providence 
in the sense of being punishment or 
malice, or anything of that sort. Never- 
theless, it certainly was an act of God, 
for without Him nothing happens. I 
know nothing of physical forces, be they 
cyclones or what not, save as immediate 
manifestations of the omnipresent crea- 
tive power of God, — the ever-present 
God without whom not a sparrow falls 
to the ground, for even the law of gravi- 
tation which causes the sparrow to fall is 
but an expression of a particular mode 
of Divine action. God is the source of 
matter. He is the source of what we 
call natural law, for the laws of nature 
did not exist always, but have arisen 
one after another in connection with the 
forms which have afforded the occasion 
for their manifestation. The Infinite and 
Eternal Power that is manifested in every 
pulsation of the universe is none other 
than the living God. But He is infinite, 



ii6 FINITE AND INFINITE 

we are finite. His ways are not our 
ways. They are as high above ours as 
the heavens are above the earth. 

" What flight of analogy can bear us 
across the gulf that divides finite intelli- 
gence from that infinite knowledge to 
which all things past and future are for- 
ever present ? The everlasting source of 
phenomena is none other than the Infinite 
Power that makes for righteousness. 
Thou canst not by searching find Him 
out, yet put thy trust in Him, and against 
thee the gates of hell shall not prevail, 
for there is neither wisdom nor under- 
standing nor counsel against the Eter- 
nal." 

Mr. Smith listened very attentively. 
He was overwhelmed by this flow of 
eloquence when he took his leave, and 
thoughtfully wended his way back to the 
hotel. After awhile he paused and solilo- 
quized thus : " He said I could not by 
searching find God. Now, before that 



ACTUS DEI 117 

cyclone blew my books away I read in 
one of them that this did not mean in 
the original Hebrew a search such as I 
have been making, but a going about 
from place to place in hopes of seeing 
God, And he said that His ways were 
as high above men's ways as the heavens 
above the earth — that is Scripture, too ; 
still, I understand that the heavens are 
not so high above the earth but that the 
astronomers have found out considerable 
about them after all, and if it's no higher 
than that, I don't see the force of the 
objection." Smith resumed his walk, 
but presently he came to another stop, 
and muttered : " He said that God makes 
the sparrows fall to the ground when 
they do fall ; and he said that God knows 
everything that is going to happen, and 
makes it happen. Wish to goodness 
He'd deduct a few cyclones from His 
programme, even if it became necessary 
to fill out with more sparrows. Bosh ! 



ii8 FINITE AND INFINITE 

that man does not know as much as 
I do." 

Smith gave it up. 

Let not the reader imagine that I have 
been putting words into the mouths of 
other men. The deliverances above at- 
tributed to the Materialist and Pantheist 
will be recognized as elementary tenets 
of those cults. Those of the Idealist are 
actual quotations from the writings of 
John Fiske. 



CHAPTER XII 

ETHICS AND NATURE 

James H. Hyslop, Professor of Logic 
and Ethics in Columbia University, re- 
cently wrote an article that was pub- 
lished in the International yournal of 
Ethics, from which I quote as follows : 

"The survival of the fittest shows that nature 
fails to accomplish any clear purpose for the indi- 
vidual apart from the lucky strong. We express 
the purpose as maintenance of the race, but as the 
race is nothing but a number of individuals the 
proper way to express it is to say that the purpose 
is the preservation of the strong and the destruc- 
tion of the weak. This is the true statement of 
the facts, and it takes the whole ethical character 
out of the process. " 

A religious newspaper approved Pro- 
fessor Hyslop's views, and said : 

119 



I20 FINITE AND INFINITE 

" Intelligence may be affirmed of a moral being, 
who has will and purpose and who manifests them 
in creation, — old-fashioned people call such a being 
God, — but no such intelligence is revealed on the 
part of nature, — only the operation of blind and 
unaided forces; and therefore a universe under 
the control alone of nature cannot properly be said 
to have a purpose, either as regards the universe 
or man." 

A secular newspaper at the same 
time commented as follows : 

" If Professor Hyslop's remarks could be forced 
deep into the minds of twenty or thirty American 
philosophers, we should hear less about the * ulti- 
mate benign purpose ' and * inherent moral inten- 
tion ' of the evolutionary process, of which all that 
can be predicated is that it cruelly eliminates the 
weak, violently preserves the strong, and thereby 
produces certain effects which, if they are not con- 
trolled by a superior intelligence, can only be said 
to be blind. Even if it be granted that the final 
consequence of evolution will be for the benefit of 
human beings who happen then to be alive, — a. 
circumstance which to us of the present genera- 
tion is only remotely consolatory, — what logical 



ACTUS DEI 121 

ground is there for speaking of that final conse- 
quence as a purpose for which we ought to feel 
grateful to the universe? Indubitably it can be 
spoken of as a result. But a blind purposeless 
result does not inspire gratitude, or trust, or faith, 
or any other emotion rightly connected with 
religion. Would not the cause of clear and hon- 
est thinking be subserved, therefore, if the men 
who do not believe in a superior controlling intel- 
ligence should drop their attempt to mitigate the 
loneliness of a purely scientific world by talking 
comfortably about a ' purpose ' which is impossi- 
ble except in connection with an intelligence 
which they deny ? ' ' 

These utterances seem very signifi- 
cant to me. They come from the widely 
different stand-points of a college pro- 
fessor, a religious editor, and a secular 
editor. They all take the same view ; 
namely, that there is no logical avoid- 
ance of choice between one or other of 
these two opinions : 

I . We must give up the idea of God 
altogether ; or. 



122 FINITE AND INFINITE 

2. If we adhere to a belief in God, 
then we cannot believe that nature fully 
reveals His character. 

This is absolutely the sole alternative 
for those who will remain unsatisfied 
until their reason becomes reconciled to 
their belief. And this is a growing- class 
everywhere, — in the pulpit as well as in 
other places. It is a class that is fur- 
nishing the foremost teachers of the 
world to-day. 

About thirty-five hundred years ago it 
was written, that once upon a timeZophar 
asked Job, " Canst thou by searching find 
out God ? " Humanity is still asking that 
question from the stand-point of Zophar 
and Job, both of whom assumed that 
God was fully responsible for all the evil 
which had befallen Job. 

" Canst thou by searching find out 
God ? " I answer that it is absolutely 
impossible to entertain an active senti- 
ment toward any being without first 



ACTUS DEI 123 

forming a mental conception of that 
being. A name is a mere abstraction. 
We cannot worship it unless we per- 
sonify it as did the Gnostics : "In the 
beginning was the Logos " (the speak- 
ing voice), " and the Logos was God." 
The search for God will continue until 
the human reason is better satisfied than 
it has ever yet been. 

And I do not mean a search for God's 
face, but for such evidences of His char- 
acter and purpose as are to be found. 
Every one knows that a person's face 
may be familiar whose disposition is very 
little known. " By their works ye shall 
know them." By His works we shall 
know Him ; but not if we believe 
that contemporary nature reveals Him. 
Nature exhibits to us two directly con- 
tradictory phenomena, — the existence of 
evil, and a constant decline of that evil, 
whereby it is gradually disappearing. 
If we compare the present earthquakes, 



124 FINITE AND INFINITE 

tempests, tides, and other disturbances 
of nature with those of the paleozoic age 
revealed by geology, we see a most 
striking change for the better. The ex- 
istence of natural evil and its enormous 
decline upon our earth are two facts so 
utterly antagonistic to each other that 
the human reason instinctively recoils 
from ascribing both to the same intelli- 
gent design. The decline of natural evil 
does not suggest an author of it, but 
a successful opponent. If God be its 
author, who is its opponent ? If God be 
its opponent, how came it to exist ? Let 
us look for the character of God in what 
we must all agree is assuredly His work, 
— in the good that is gradually supplant- 
ing the evil, and we shall be better pre- 
pared to search out the cause of evil. 
Let us no longer run counter to logic 
and reason by assuming that the search 
for God and the search for evil are the 
same. 



ACTUS DEI 125 

Nature reveals two things to us : 
Good and Evil. Let us cease attempt- 
ing to trace these to one source. Let 
us return from the Realm of the Impos- 
sible to the goodly, and Godly, Kingdom 
of Common Sense. 

There is an ethical purpose revealed 
in nature, but it has no appearance of 
being a purpose proceeding from nature. 
Nature exhibits to us a series of blind 
purposeless energies and atoms, nothing 
more. But the history of nature reveals 
more than this, for it reveals a tendency 
toward good and away from evil, — away 
from all sorts of evil, — natural and moral. 
The very fact that evolution has pro- 
duced a race whose present ethical no- 
tions demand the preservation of the 
weak, shows that if we compare the 
present, or any other period, with some 
remote past, and observe what has 
occurred meantime, we shall have before 
us a history that confounds all attempts 



126 FINITE AND INFINITE 

to spell out a final purpose from what is 
exhibited to us during our own brief 
lives. We shall see that this purpose 
had a longer reach than the preser- 
vation of the physically strong, when 
that was the highest ideal. That is an 
ethical idea which belongs only to brutes 
and savages of the lowest order. It no 
longer rules man. It is intellectual 
strength that counts most in the struggle 
for existence. This also is only a step, 
as the former was. It indicates a change 
of method, but, of itself, it discloses no 
ethical purpose, for the physically weak 
man, who overcomes the physically strong 
man by reason of superior intelligence, 
may be, and often is, more cruel than 
the most relentless savage. There yet 
remains a vista in the ethical highway. 
There is a beyond, — that beyond in which 
Jesus travelled, and whither He beck- 
oned us. And many have gone therein, 
and more and more follow. The advent 



ACTUS DEI T27 

of just such souls as Professor Hyslop, 
and the constantly increasing number of 
them, demanding an ethics which shall 
protect the weak, is proof that God is 
still "in His heaven," slowly but surely 
working out His beneficent purposes, 
ever and ever supplanting that which 
was with that which is higher and better. 
Let us not make such a foolish mistake 
as to suppose that a Being who is doing 
this — supplanting evil with good — would 
delay the work unnecessarily, would 
adopt a slow process if He had the choice 
of a speedy one. Let us keep in mind 
that it is things, i.e., realities, truths, that 
are possible to God. Let us not forget 
that what is made can never become in- 
finite in quantity, and that, therefore, 
what is infinite in quantity cannot have 
been made, but must be eternal and self- 
existent. Therefore let us not accuse 
God of having brought into existence the 
materials out of which nature has been 



128 FINITE AND INFINITE 

evolved. Those materials are infinite, 
eternal, and the properties they possess 
are therefore innate ; for, as an infinite 
mass cannot be made, so, for the same 
reason, it cannot be endowed. 



CHAPTER XIII 

TWICE NOTHING IS NOTHING 

The essence of all that exists, or ever 
did exist, in finite form, whether that 
essence be matter, life, energy, mentality, 
or spirit, must have existed before as a 
finite part of an infinite source of supply. 
Things can be made, that is, formed; but 
there must previously exist that from 
which they were made ; for a thing cannot 
be made from nothing- in a universe where 
Truth exists. We must learn to distin- 
guish things, forms, individuals, finites of 
all sorts, and of all manner of compound- 
ing, from those primal elements out of 
which they have been fashioned, — matter, 
energy, mentality, life, spirit ; for if the 
quantity of these be finite there must 
assuredly be an end to creation, as time 
is eternal, and any work begun with a 

9 129 



I30 FINITE AND INFINITE 

finite source of supply must inevitably 
end some time for want of the where- 
withal to continue ; unless it proceed 
thereafter by reducing what has been 
made back to the original condition and 
beginning to make it over again, and 
this would be mere child's play if it were 
to go on interminably, as it must do, or 
end. 

The common mind of humanity, when 
it is not impelled by what we call intuition, 
moves along the lines of least resistance, 
and thus adopts beliefs which belie the 
evidence of the senses, or are opposed 
to the individual's reason. Thus we 
adopt many of our opinions through the 
mere habit of hearing others express 
them, or from reading books. Some- 
times we are led into error and sometimes 
to the truth in this way. Civilized people 
now believe that the earth revolves upon 
its axis ; uncivilized people believe the 
evidence of their eyes, — that the sun 



ACTUS DEI 131 

moves around the earth. But it took no 
little time for the truth to receive com- 
mon acceptance after it was announced ; 
and it came to be believed generally, 
not from a general knowledge of the 
reasons which lead up to it, but, one by 
one, men came to admit it because some 
one else did in whom they had confi- 
dence, or because " everybody says so," 
as the saying is. " Everybody says so" 
is and has always been one of the most 
potent causes in spreading both truth 
and error, and it has ever been the most 
invulnerable chain that has bound human- 
ity to superstition and unreason, for it 
depends not upon reason, but upon 
habit. 

In this way the absurdity that all we 
see — planets and everything thereon, 
and the multitude of suns — came from 
nothing ; a chimera born in the credulous 
fancy of primitive man still lives and 
thrives in every-day theology. But twice 



132 FINITE AND INFINITE 

nothing is nothing, and a billion times 
nothing is no more, for what is truth 
once is truth always, and what is truth in 
one place is truth everywhere, and as 
multiplication will not now serve to in- 
crease nothing into something, we may 
be sure there never was a time when it 
could be done, for the truths of mathe- 
matics are of God, as is all truth. 



CHAPTER XIV 

A STATEMENT OF THE QUESTION 

The history of nature impresses us 
with a wonderful system of orderly de- 
velopment, resulting in the myriad forms 
of vegetable and animal life which we 
see about us. Lookingr at what it has 
come to be, we find no language ade- 
quate to express our admiration. At the 
head of all, and most marvellous of all, 
stands Man, a composite being, made up 
of Time, Space, Matter, Life, Energy, 
Mind, Spirit, Love, Hate, Truth, False- 
hood, and all infinite essences both good 
and evil. We turn from these earthly 
phenomena to the lesser but more pon- 
derous and impressive marvels of stellar 
space with its teeming multitudes of 
burning suns, suggesting the probability 
of many other planets upon which the 

^33 



134 FINITE AND INFINITE 

wonders of our own earth have been 
or are being duplicated. We naturally 
think of these things as having been 
made. We know they are not made as 
we make things, quickly, but that they 
have reached their present characteristics 
through what seems to us a very slow 
process of evolution. Evolution from 
what ? The kernel lies in this question. 
Did God, before He began this evolu- 
tionary process whereby these things 
have all been made, or whereby they 
are in process of making, bring into ex- 
istence that out of which they have been 
evolved ? 

Let us take matter to begin with. The 
qualities or properties of matter are the 
direct causes of all natural evil, and we 
have no knowledge of any other cause. 
As an instance fresh in all our minds, 
take the recent eruption of the Pelee 
volcano in the French West Indies, caus- 
ing the destruction in a few moments of 



ACTUS DEI 135 

all the inhabitants of a good-sized city. 
It was caused by the explosive and heat- 
producing energies of matter stored up 
in the bowels of the earth. We all re- 
cognize that as the proximate cause of a 
human holacaust which shocked the sen- 
sibilities of all civilized people. So far 
all will agree, — the properties of matter 
constituted the immediate causes of the 
calamity. But suppose it allowable to 
suggest a remote cause of it, the cause 
that endowed matter with properties. I 
am at least entitled to say that when we 
make that sort of suggestion we are en- 
tering the realm of conjecture. No one 
will deny that. We know that the prop- 
erties of matter were the direct cause 
of the evil, and we guess that there is a 
cause still farther back, a cause respon- 
sible for the properties of matter. 

I have, then, to argue against conject- 
ure, and I shall oppose it with facts and 
with reason. It ought not to be difficult 



136 FINITE AND INFINITE 

to overcome conjecture with such weap- 
ons. 

If any human being- wantonly destroyed 
a single life, to say nothing of so many, 
and in such a horribly cruel manner as 
by burning, we could only have one 
opinion as to his character. When evil 
is observed, a natural and highly ethical 
desire implanted in the human mind im- 
pels us to find so7ne one on whom to lay 
the blame. And this detective impulse 
is so strong that we seem compelled to 
attribute evil to spiritual agencies, where 
no other cause can be found. 

I have now open before me a book 
which states that 13,000,000 would be a 
fair estimate of the number of people 
who have perished from earthquakes dur- 
ing the historic period. Truly, if we 
assume that this killing was all done 
purposely, there is a pretty big indict- 
ment against somebody. And yet there 
must be other and more shocking counts 



ACTUS DEI 137 

in this indictment ; for the number who 
have perished by storms and lightning 
is still greater, many times greater. And 
if we should go back a few hundred 
thousand years to primitive man, and fol- 
low up the trail of death directly due to 
these natural causes, we should no doubt 
have a sum total greater than the present 
population of the earth. Put them all 
in the indictment ; we might as well 
make one job of it. 

But we are not ready to draw the in- 
dictment, for we have not found the doer 
of all this evil. We must make some in- 
quiry. We ask the "Tom, Dick, and 
Harry" of Idealism and Theology their 
opinion, and they all reverently answer 
that it is God, and that we must not 
blame Him, as His ways are past finding 
out, and His purposes must be assumed 
to be wise, merciful, and just in the long 
run. I should be compelled to make 
some such answer myself did I not be- 



138 FINITE AND INFINITE 

lieve the suggestion that God is the 
cause of all these evils to be mere con- 
jecture, and a survival of an idea that 
has come down to us from the babyhood 
of the human race. Is it possible for us 
to cast off this old superstition that has 
had a lodging-place in human thought 
for perhaps a hundred thousand years, — 
the idea that natural evil is due to spirit- 
ual causes ? We have advanced some- 
what, indeed quite a way, in the direction 
of getting rid of it. We used to think 
that spiritual agencies were the direct 
causes of those evils. It was only yes- 
terday, as it were, that the learned 
Greeks pictured Zeus as sitting on the 
top of Olympus and hurling his thun- 
der-bolts at people ; while y^olus pur- 
sued with windy vengeance those who 
went down to the sea in ships. Civilized 
man no longfer regfards these calamities 
as the direct acts of God. He knows 
that the direct causes of them exist in 



ACTUS DEI 139 

nature, but he conjectures all the same 
that God put those causes into nature. 

Thus the old idea still hangs onto our 
minds, with a weakened grasp, it may 
be, but there it is. Shall we ever get rid 
of it? I trust we may. We certainly 
shall if we go at it in the right way. 



CHAPTER XV . 

FACTS VERSUS CONJECTURE 

How does this conjecture, that God 
caused evil, fare with the facts ? What 
are the facts ? Who can thoughtfully 
observe the wonderful evolution of the 
material universe extending backward 
during countless ages without believing 
that God's purposes are serious, — that 
He does not form things merely to de- 
stroy them afterwards ? Who can con- 
sider the fact of the steady decline of 
natural evil, and not be convinced that 
God is opposed to it ? Who can com- 
pare natural accidents to the prevailing 
order of nature, and attribute both to 
the same intelligent purpose ? God's 
methods, as shown in almost all the 
phenomena of nature, from planets, with 

their orbital and axial motions, up 
140 



ACTUS DEI 141 

through all the various stages and forms 
of vegetable and animal life, are orderly 
and progressive. In appearance, this 
class of phenomena, constituting the 
almost invariable rule of nature, differs 
so radically from such a thing as an 
earthquake, a tornado or a thunder-bolt, 
that reason recoils from suspecting both 
to have the same origin. The class of 
phenomena which commend themselves 
to our consciousness as being good are 
assuredly the rule. Those which are 
evidently evil happen so very seldom, 
as compared with the others, that they 
must be looked upon as rare exceptions. 

From the monera to man is a pro- 
digious stride ; and will any one say 
that it does not betoken a Creator who 
is good and wise, and has a serious pur- 
pose ? Does the tornado suggest wis- 
dom or goodness ? 

If we follow the history of moral ideas 
we shall find the same ever-increasing 



142 FINITE AND INFINITE 

prevalence of the good, and disappear- 
ance of evil. As our ethical standard 
mounts higher, century by century, we 
may find as much, and even more, fault 
with evil as did the reformers of old with 
the evil of their own day ; but we know, 
nevertheless, that there has been a 
change for the better among civilized 
nations in the attitude of the public to- 
ward the old evils that we still have with 
us, as well as in the disappearance of 
many and great evils which were once 
common, in war, in law, in government, 
in society, and in the home. Vice no 
longer vaunts itself as of old ; we no 
longer tolerate piracy, slavery, polygamy, 
despotism, the sack of cities, the slaugh- 
ter of prisoners or defenceless people. 
We have abandoned the dungeon. The 
father no longer has the legal right of 
the Roman to kill his children. Had a 
certain general, who commanded his sol- 
diers to " kill all over ten years of age," 



ACTUS DEI 143 

lived two thousand years ago, history 
might have written him down a hero, 
with Marius, Sylla and JuHus the first 
Caesar, but he lived in our day, in the 
United States, and was court-martialed. 

Thus the disclosures of geology and 
the lessons of human history prove that 
both in the physical world and in society 
there has been a pervading and constant 
increase of harmony in nature, and 
peace and good-will among men. These 
are the evidences of God's benevolent 
purposes. Let us, therefore, follow the 
simple dictates of reason and common- 
sense, here, as in other matters, and look 
outside of rather than in the nature of 
such a Being for the existence of those 
natural and moral evils which are grad- 
ually disappearing from the world as a 
result of His opposition to them. 

" Canst thou by searching find out 
God?" Let the same Scripture answer: 
** My son : if thou seek him, he will be 



144 FINITE AND INFINITE 

found of thee." (i Chron. xxviii. 9.) 
" Prepare thy heart to seek God." 
(2 Chron. xix. 3.) " With my spirit 
within me will I seek thee." (Isaiah 
xxvi. 9.) " And ye shall seek me and 
find me when ye shall search for me 
with all your heart." (Jer. xxix. 13.) 
" Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and 
his righteousness," (Matt. vi. 2)3-) 

Let Science answer : Long ago and 
during a period counted by hundreds of 
thousands of years, while the earth's 
crust was forming, there was a contin- 
uous reign of storm. And what a storm ! 
Professor Mitchell, in " Walks and Talks 
in the Geological Field," says : 

" Here, in this storm of the ages, the dazzling 
glare of ten thousand lightning gleams sheds an 
infernal tinge over the murky world ; and the re- 
sponsive voices of ten thousand thunders split the 
welkin with their detonations. While this fury 
and chaos reign, the line of battle sinks to the hot 
surface of the earth, and all at once the attacking 



ACTUS DEI 145 

waters are volatilized in ten thousand explosions, 
which rend the elements. Imagination, even, 
shrinks from the contemplation of the scene." 

yEons after the beginning of that 
storm the sun at last pierced a rift 
through the clouds and shone for the 
first time upon a world whose thin crust 
was covered with boiling water, save for 
such transient peaks as storm and tide, 
now and then, jammed and thrust upward 
for presage of what was yet to come. 
"And it was evening, and it was morn- 
ing ; first day." 

Who said, "Let there be light" ? 

Y^ons passed while struggling ridges 
of land were upheaved only to be again 
washed away by mighty tides and deluges 
of water cast upon the land through in- 
ternal forces of heat, and explosive en- 
ergies, everywhere upheaving the ocean 
bed. The struggle of the elements con- 
tinued in cyclonic storms and hurricanes 
of magnitude beyond human conception. 



146 FINITE AND INFINITE 

and the chaos was heightened by the 
never-ceasing war between land and sea. 

^ons passed again, and the northern 
part of North America, the Adirondacks, 
Appalachians, Cordilleras, Rockies, and 
Californian mountain- ranges withstood 
the shock of the enormous waves and 
mighty tides that pounded against them, 
and then the shores, once having ob- 
tained a firm foothold, began to grow, 
and land animals reinforced the life that 
had already existed for ages in the ocean. 

More aeons passed and man appeared, 
primitive, savage, weak, compared with 
many other animals, yet by superior in- 
tellect lord of the animal king-dom and 
able to defend himself successfully against 
the strong. The age of the survival of 
the physically strong was passing away. 
The reign of primeval storm and tide, 
of continental upheavals and submer- 
sions had long ceased. The world had 
grown better. Natural evil, once domi- 



ACTUS DEI 147 

nant, had become an outcast vagabond, 
showing its face but rarely, when the 
earth received her king. 

Let History answer : That king to 
whose efforts the further progress of 
peace and good-will were now entrusted, 
slowly but surely, under the guidance 
of a Divine, ethical impulse planted 
within his mind, has been and is accom- 
plishing the trust. We began our brief 
history with a picture of a primeval 
storm raging uninterruptedly over the 
face of the earth during aeons of time, 
ages of darkness when clouds of black 
vapor from a boiling ocean enveloped 
the planet to the height of hundreds of 
miles, when life of any sort, to say noth- 
ing of comfortable existence, was impos- 
sible. We close it with a smiline world 
so beautiful that the poet's pen struggles 
ineffectually to describe it ; a world in 
which, although there still remains some 
misery, there is such a vast preponder- 



148 FINITE AND INFINITE 

ance of happiness that very few indeed 
of its denizens desire to quit it ; a world 
beginning to teem with books and schools, 
churches and charitable institutions ; a 
world whose ideals are higher than its 
achievements ; a world into which Jesus 
came, to go about doing good, and to 
bring a message of peace and good-will ; 
a world which has, haltingly, but never- 
theless surely, shown that it is going to 
follow "the Way, the Truth, and the 
Life " more and more as the centuries 
are counted ; a world which is produc- 
ing many sensitive and impatient souls 
who, dissatisfied with what they can do 
or see done during their own brief lives, 
are inclined to criticise the element of 
tardiness in human progress, and even 
wonder why an all-wise and benevolent 
God has performed His good work so 
slowly. 

Such are the answers of the Bible, 
of Science, and of History, to Zophar's 



ACTUS DEI 149 

question : " Canst thou by searching find 
out God?" 

Who is responsible for supplanting 
that primeval storm with the beauty of 
nature and the happiness, prosperity and 
love which now exist upon earth ? Is 
not this the right point from which to 
begin our inquiry as to the cause of 
evil, rather than from the stand-point of 
evil itself? How, then, did the evil 
come ? But wait ; let us be logical, 
let us dispose of one question before we 
pass to the next. The question now is, 
having sought God and found His char- 
acter for love and goodness and wisdom 
to be proven in the best way possible, — 
that is, by His works, — must we not at 
least look elsewhere for the source of 
evil? 



CHAPTER XVI 

SUMMING UP THE ARGUMENT 

We have seen that there is a realm of 
the absolutely impossible wherein even 
Omnipotence is powerless for the reason 
that what is infinite or absolute, or self- 
existent, cannot be destroyed or changed 
into its opposite. 

Did God bring into existence, out of 
nothing, the materials from which He 
formed the planets ? Clearly, if He did, 
He had the choice of materials, and 
being, as He evidently is, opposed to 
natural evil, His desire must have been 
to produce materials from which planets 
could be made without the collateral re- 
sult of natural evil. But as the evil 
exists, and as its gradual eradication in 
the past shows that He is opposed to it, 
and as it evidently arises from the prop- 
150 



ACTUS DEI 151 

erties of matter, we are forced to choose 
between two conclusions : either that He 
made a mistake in producing matter, or 
that He did not produce it at all. It 
seems to me that the natural evidences 
of God's wisdom are too many and won- 
derful to permit the supposition that He 
fell into a mistake. Besides, if He could 
produce matter from nothing, He could 
at any moment change its nature, or de- 
stroy it and replace it, and so correct the 
error. 

If, then, God did not bring primary 
matter into existence. He must have 
been confronted from the first with any 
evil which inhered either in matter 
itself or in its original condition. There 
was evil in that condition, for it was cer- 
tainly unproductive. God determined 
to conquer this all-pervading evil ; to 
change this useless mass into happy 
worlds. In the nature of things there 
can be but one right way to do any given 



152 FINITE AND INFINITE 

work ; every other way must have a 
modicum of error, more or less. Two 
ways to produce the same exact effect is 
an utter impossibihty. There was only 
one best way in which planets, fit for His 
purpose, could be formed from the ex- 
isting materials. He had a purpose be- 
yond the mere formation of planets ; and 
it does not seem difficult to believe that 
the form and texture of planets adopted, 
is better suited to the designed purpose 
than any other of which the materials 
were capable ; nor to believe that the 
growing harmony and happiness of our 
own planet indicates that His purpose 
was wise and benevolent. 

Moreover it seems clear from a study 
of nature that, so far as the material uni- 
verse is concerned, the work of God has 
been, and is, to organize matter, give it 
form, develop it, advance its condition, 
make it productive of good. Geology 
teaches us that such has been His 



ACTUS DEI 153 

work upon this planet for untold ages. 
Astronomy reveals to us a like work in 
other portions of space. Upon the earth 
which we inhabit, and in the firmament 
of stars, He has written plainly the fact 
that He is still at work. Think of it well. 
God at work ! Something that He did 
not do until to-day. Something that He 
will begin to-morrow. Our own solar 
system shows us planets in various stages 
of formation. If we look farther we see 
in the nebulae what seem to be still 
younger systems, where His work has 
more recently begun. And still farther 
beyond we reach the infinite storehouse 
of untouched matter, which is to be 
considered hereafter in connection with 
the subject of a Finite Universe. 

We may briefly sum up the results of 
our inquiry thus : God is apparently the 
enemy of natural evil, because He has 
been continually removing it. As this 
fact is inconsistent with the supposition 



154 FINITE AND INFINITE 

that He broucrht the evil into existence 

o 

we should look elsewhere for its cause. 
We find the immediate cause in the prop- 
erties of matter. If matter is self-existent, 
this immediate cause is also necessarily 
the primary cause. But if the Maker 
brought matter into existence from noth- 
ing, then He is the cause, and we can ex- 
plain His opposition to natural evil only 
upon the theory of mistake in producing 
matter and endowing it with its proper- 
ties. That theory is inadmissible, be- 
cause, first. His works show Him to be a 
supremely wise Being who could hardly 
fall into such a fundamental error ; and, 
second, a Being who could produce 
matter from nothing: would, if He found 
the production faulty, immediately reduce 
it back to nothing and replace it with 
other and faultless material. These con- 
siderations, added to the utter absurdity 
of the proposition that something can be 
produced from nothing, lead us to the 



ACTUS DEI 155 

conclusion that matter in its primary con- 
dition was self-existent, and so it must 
be the primary cause, as it is the imme- 
diate cause, of natural evil. We would, 
from this stand-point, be led to expect 
the Maker's real work in nature to be 
just what we find in the history of the 
progress of nature as shown by geology 
and astronomy, — namely, a gradual and 
continuous evolution and improvement 
of the condition of matter, — a work as 
infinite as space, as ceaseless as eternity. 
The easily discerned lesson of nature 
is this, — that wherever the hand of the 
Maker reaches, there the certain promise 
is made of an ultimate reign of happiness 
and love. The long ages of gradual im- 
provement warrant this conclusion. If 
there be now, or at any time, upon this 
planet, some remnant of disorder which 
God has not removed, it only shows that 
there are yet a few places and conditions 
where His good work is unfinished. 



156 FINITE AND INFINITE 

The development and improvement of 
an infinite quantity of matter is an infinite 
work. It cannot be comprised within a 
moment, a day, a year, a milHon years, 
nor within any finite period however 
great. The finite can never contain the 
infinite. That is one of God's truths, 
and He, therefore, cannot violate it by 
completing His infinite task at any time. 
It must ever go on. It will always grow 
better, but never be finished. This 
planet is like all His works, a growth, an 
evolution from a condition of uselessness 
to one of usefulness. The first condition 
of matter was not, and, as we have seen, 
could not be of His making. Nor can 
any remnants of that condition be 
ascribed to Him. The growth is His. The 
order and harmony are His. He alone 
made human life possible upon this 
planet. If at present our bodies are not 
absolutely secure ; if we occasionally re- 
ceive disease, injury, or death from the 



ACTUS DEI 157 

material elements without our fault, let 
us remember that once we could not 
have existed here at all. Then instead of 
blaming the Maker for what He has not 
yet finished, for not making something 
out of nothing, for not changing matter 
into intelligent love, we may learn to 
thank Him for what He has done and 
for that earnest of what He intends yet 
to do in the improvement of nature, and 
we may rest secure in the faith that as 
fast as material elements can in any 
possible way be controlled and brought 
into subjection to law, He will continue, 
as in the past, to relieve His creatures 
from all physical dangers against which 
they are unable to protect themselves. 



CHAPTER XVII 

CONCLUSION 

The idea that we must not look to 
God as the source of evil is not original 
with me, though I have produced several 
arguments in support of it that I have 
not met with before. 

John Fiske says in "The Idea of God," 
page 124: 

"Among the profoundest thinkers of the Aryan 
race there have been two who have explicitly 
adopted the solution which limits the Creator's 
power. One of these was Plato, who held that 
God's perfect goodness had been partially 
thwarted by the intractableness of the materials 
he had to work with. . . . The other great thinker 
who adopted a similar solution was Leibnitz. In 
his famous theory of optimism the world is 
by no means represented as perfect; it is only 
the best of all possible worlds, the best the 
158 



ACTUS DEI 159 

Creator could make out of the materials at 
hand. In recent times Mr. Mill shows a marked 
preference for this view, and one of the foremost 
religious teachers now living, Dr. Martineau, falls 
into a parallel line of thinking in his suggestion 
that the primary qualities of matter constitute a 
'datum objective to God,' who, 'in shaping the 
orbits out of immensity, and determining seasons 
out of eternity, could but follow the laws of curva- 
ture, measure, and proportion.' " 

I respectfully submit that the stone 
offered by Plato and Leibnitz, Mill and 
Martineau, though hitherto rejected by 
the builders, must become the corner- 
stone of that temple of Theology which 
shall endure forever as a place for the 
worship of an all-wise and all-powerful 
God of Love, who doeth all things well, 
who abideth in Reason and Truth, and 
with the Everlasting Realities, and so 
doeth only things, speaketh only truths, 
and dealeth not with chimerical absurdi- 
ties, but with the eternal actualities of 



i6o FINITE AND INFINITE 

Good, Evil, Time, Space, Spirit, Mind, 
Life, Energy, Motion, Matter ; who is 
the personification of Love, Truth, and 
Goodness, and has ever abhorred evil in 
all its forms. 

I have less respect for the wisdom than 
for the ingenuity of that class of casuists 
who affirm that nothing can exist apart 
from consciousness. If the earth were 
devoid of any form possessing conscious 
intelligence it could still exist with its 
myriad vegetable and mineral forms ready 
for cognition by the first one that should 
come into existence upon it, as it did for 
untold ages before the advent upon it of 
any form of conscious intellect. In other 
words, matter is an absolute entity and 
not a mere creature of imagination which 
in an inconceivable way reveals its mani- 
fold forms in precisely the same shape 
to each of earth's inhabitants, when first 
seen, and wherever seen, exhibiting an 
unaccountable multitude of coincidences 



ACTUS DEI i6i 

that carries us far beyond the limits of 
the possible. 

Having, as I trust, changed the direc- 
tion of the quest for evil away from its 
opponent, God, it is not my purpose 
here to search for its explanation farther. 
Of this we are assured, — that God is not 
its author. Therefore, if we look further 
let us begin to look elsewhere. For 
myself, I am satisfied when I know that 
God is its enemy. Let us "come to the 
help of the Lord against the Mighty," — 
the hosts of evil, for to that end I be- 
lieve we have been brought into being. 

Monism is a utisnoTner. It is a bad 
form of dualism. It increases difficulties, 
instead of removing them. When it as- 
sumes the phase of Pantheism it gives 
us a God who unites within Himself two 
irreconcilable enemies, — good and evil. 
Is a house divided against itself Monism ? 
It is the Pantheist, not I, who limits the 
power of God. Of what use is power 



1 62 FINITE AND INFINITE 

unless there be some obstacle to over- 
come ? Pantheism does not deny the 
existence of obstacles, but it places them 
in the nature of God instead of outside 
Him, The difference between Good and 
Evil cannot be eradicated by bringing 
them together, whether the place of 
meeting be in the nature of a supposed 
God, or elsewhere in the illimitable realm 
of Chimera. When Good is Evil, when 
Love is Hate, when Light is Darkness, 
when Power is Impotence, when Intel- 
ligence is Ignorance, when Sciolism is 
Philosophy, when all sorts of opposites 
are alike, then we shall have Pantheism, 
and therefore we shall have nothing ; 
for Pantheism is the sum-total of all self- 
contradictions and self-destructive con- 
ceptions. 



PART II 
A FINITE UNIVERSE 



"Great is our Lord, and of great power: his 
understanding is infinite.'' — Psalm cxlvii. 5 



CHAPTER I 

What is the sky? — The author's views sent to 
Popular Astronomy in 1894; synopsis thereof 
published ; comments of the editor — Herschel, 
Tyndall, Wallace, and Spring agree that its color 
proves the sky to be matter of some sort. 

What is the sky ? Is it not, when we 
really think about it, a most wonderful 
and striking phenomenon ? At the birth 
of the human race infants saw it, ac- 
cepted it unquestioningly, as they ac- 
cepted light, air, heat, cold. Until very 
recently, man passed from the cradle to 
the grave with little thought or question 
about those things which were always 
with him, — those phenomena which never 
ceased. Though we know, now, that 
Newton was not the first to ask. Why 
do the apples fall ? — that the question 
was asked more than two thousand years 

16S 



1 66 FINITE AND INFINITE 

ago, by observing men, — we also know 
that Newton was the first to give a de- 
monstrable answer. It was only yester- 
day that Science bethought itself to ask, 
"What is heat, light, air?" Yet these 
have ever been absolutely essential to 
our existence, and ever present with us. 
How many have asked, "What is the 
sky ?" 

One day, a good many years ago, the 
sky, which since childhood I had been 
looking at with no awakening of curios- 
ity, presented itself to my thought as the 
most wonderful and striking phenome- 
non in all Nature. What is it ? Where 
is it ? Is it something ? Is it nothing ? 
These questions became everpresent with 
me. I had recourse to books and found 
that the question had been asked before, 
and very recently, by John Herschel and 
by John Tyndall. But their attempted 
solution of the riddle seemed unsatisfac- 
tory. They left at least one important 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 167 

and perfectly obvious fact unaccounted 
for. They attributed the color of the sky 
to the light of the sun shining upon 
rarefied dust in the upper region of our 
atmosphere. But the sky is blue at night 
when the sun does not shine upon that 
dust ; and we can see the stars as we 
could not if such a blue substance inter- 
vened. In 1894 I sent to the editor of 
Popular Asironomy an article in which, 
after some introductory statements, the 
followine conclusion and argument were 
set forth : 

" I. The sky is beyond the stars. 

"2. The sky is matter of some sort. 

"3. The sky is probably an infinite depth of 
gas surrounding the sidereal system, and composed 
of the same material elements from which the 
stars and planets were evolved. 

"The facts which appear to prove the first of 
these propositions, viz., that the sky is beyond the 
stars, are as follows : i . The sky has color ; 2 . 
The blue of the sky becomes intensified to the eye 
when observed from the tops of mountains, or in 



1 68 FINITE AND INFINITE 

elevated regions, where there is scarcity of vapor 
and rarity of atmosphere ; 3. The blue of the sky 
does not intercept, or impair, the light of the 
stars. The light of the stars is not blue as if it 
came through a blue medium. Any substance, 
capable of color, and occupying the space be- 
tween us and the stars in sufficient quantity to 
look as blue as the sky, must have such density in 
the line of vision that it would either shut out the 
light of the stars altogether, as a blue cloud would 
do, or at least seem to do so, by permitting none 
but blue rays to come to us. The fact that the 
spectrum of a star's light discloses all the rays, 
conclusively proves that this intensely blue thing 
which we call sky is not between us and the stars. 

' ' The conclusion that the sky is matter of some 
sort seems to be a necessary deduction from the 
fact that it has color. Color is the result of the 
coming together of matter and light- waves. Color 
has never yet been found separated from matter. 

"If the sky is matter of some sort, and is 
beyond the stars, the inquiry naturally presents 
itself: Why is not the matter composing the sky 
within the sidereal system, as well as beyond it ? 
And the most reasonable theory to suggest as an 
answer seems to be that the sky is composed of 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 169 

the same gaseous elements from which the planets 
and stars have been evolved, and so we cannot 
expect to find it within the space occupied by the 
stars, except as we find it solidified or condensed 
into planets or stars, or nebulse. 

" The theory that the process of star making is 
going on every day is not only consistent with the 
law of evolution, but, if we reflect, we shall find it 
to be a necessary corollary of that law. It also 
receives material support from many observed 
facts which I need not mention. But that theory 
cannot stand for a moment save upon the hypothe- 
sis that there exists in space the material from 
which new stars can be evolved. 

"Looking upon the sky as unorganized or un- 
formed matter, what solemn and awe-inspiring 
thoughts crowd upon us ! The workshop of the 
Almighty ! The material for myriads of future 
stars lies there undisturbed. That which, ages 
hence, in God's good time, shall, through His 
Divine Laws, become evolved into the material 
bodies of countless beings whose planetary abodes 
are not yet in embryo, there awaits His Divine art 
and quickening breath. So did the elements of 
these bodies of ours, ages upon ages ago, when, 
perhaps, intelligent creatures, inhabiting older 



I70 FINITE AND INFINITE 

systems, looking hitherward upon the gaseous mat- 
ter from which our solar system was afterwards 
formed, asked themselves, ' What is the sky ?' 

" And is not the sky, thus considered, an in- 
dispensable fact without which creation past cannot 
be accounted for, nor creation future expected? 
Is it not essential to the best approved theory of 
material evolution that there should be an infinite 
storehouse of unused material existing outside of 
organized matter, . . . raw material awaiting the 
hand of the Divine Artificer to mould and fashion 
it into stars ; the sidereal system's atmosphere, 
which, however much may be taken from it and 
added to the living world, must, by reason of the 
infinity of space which it fills, ever remain an en- 
velope that will eternally reflect and conserve light, 
heat, and all the energies expended within the 
sidereal system?" 

The editor of Popular Astronomy was 
kind enough to say some complimentary 
things about this article in a letter to me, 
and I had reason to expect its publica- 
tion, but after waiting a few months I 
found in the magazine, under the head 
of " Practical Suggestions," the follow- 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 171 

ing {^Popular Astronomy^ volume iii., 
page 329, March, 1895) : 

"What is the sky? ... T. C. R. 

"Recently we received a full and well -written 
letter from a person who evidently knows how to 
think, and how to express his thoughts in writing. 
Having given his attention somewhat to the above 
query he believed he had reached some conclusions 
which were based on sound reasoning. The first 
was that the sky is beyond the stars. The facts 
which appear to prove this are three, viz. : 

" I. The sky has color. 2. The blue of the sky 
becomes intensified when observed from the tops 
of mountains, or in elevated regions where there 
is scarcity of vapor and rarity of atmosphere. 
3. The blue of the sky does not intercept or im- 
pair the light of the stars. ' ' 

Upon page 230 of the volume referred 
to, the editor makes some comments 
upon my theory as follows : 

" The conclusion that the sky is beyond the 
stars, reached by our correspondent, must mean 
that the source of the blue of the sky is beyond the 



172 FINITE AND INFINITE 

stars. The fact that the blue of the sky is intensi- 
fied, for instance, when observed from the tops of 
mountains, rather supports the idea that the blue 
color is an atmospheric phenomenon, rather than 
one produced in the far-off star spaces. Again we 
cannot certainly affirm that light does not lose 
something or is not in some way changed in pass- 
ing through the vast depths of ethereal space. ' ' 

I was puzzled by the reference to my 
article as "a full and well-written letter." 
I had written a letter and enclosed it 
with the article, but it contained only a 
brief skeleton of the main points, without 
any repetition of the argument contained 
in the article, some of the strongest fea- 
tures' of which were entirely omitted 
from the foregoing mention of my 
"letter." I wrote to the editor, and 
received an answer saying that my article 
had been submitted to two scientists, 
and that as they did not approve my 
theory of the sky he had not published 
it. I requested the return of the article, 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 173 

and the editor replied again that he had 
submitted it to the two scientists, whose 
names he had not given me. From this 
I concluded that probably the article 
was not in his possession, and that when 
he published the foregoing meagre 
sketch he had nothing to remind him of 
the argument set forth in it, but such 
brief reference as was contained in my 
letter. I did not really care about the 
article, as I had copies of it, and that 
" closed the incident." But I felt thank- 
ful to Mr. Payne, that having disclosed 
the article to persons unknown to me, 
he had taken pains to preserve in his 
magazine evidence that would at any 
time, if it ever became necessary, enable 
me to establish my claim as the origina- 
tor of the idea that the sky is an envelope 
of gas or other primary matter surround- 
ing the sidereal system ; for, having full 
faith in that theory, I felt then, as I do 
yet, that in time it would be accepted by 



174 FINITE AND INFINITE 

scientific men as my own mite of a con- 
tribution to the stupendous edifice of 
science which is being erected by them. 
Two celebrated scientists, Wallace of 
England and Spring of Belgium, have 
recently devoted considerable attention 
to the fact that the sky has color, and 
deal with this fact, as it should be dealt 
with, at least so far as to assume that it 
could not have color unless it is some- 
thing. See "Man's Place in the Uni- 
verse," Wallace, pages 247 to 253. But 
Mr. Wallace, like all others, so far as I 
know what others have said, overlooks 
the important fact that this color inter- 
poses no obstacle to our vision of the 
stars. That point was tersely stated in 
the note credited to me in the magazine 
Popular Astronomy. "The blue of the 
sky does not intercept or impair the 
light of the stars." This it would cer- 
tainly do if it were between us and 
the stars. But it seems to me that my 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 175 

theory of the sky has received strong 
support within the last few years from 
the opinions of astronomers upon a 
closely related question, viz., the abso- 
lute persistence, and indestructibility of 
light-waves in ether space, from which 
physicists necessarily infer that if all 
matter in the infinity of space has been 
developed into stars and nebulse, then, 
as one writer expresses it, " the sky 
would be ablaze night and day and 
we could distinguish the sun only as a 
rather yellowish disk." Now if the in- 
finite mass of matter has not been so de- 
veloped into suns, i.e., stars, as to make 
the heavens one blaze of light, where 
and what is that portion of it which has 
not so been converted ? Having thus 
briefly outlined my theory, and the argu- 
ment in support of it, I shall endeavor 
in subsequent chapters to answer the 
arguments adduced in support of the 
two other theories thus far advanced. 



176 FINITE AND INFINITE 

And, at the same time, I will make the 
reader acquainted with such recent dis- 
coveries in the realm of Astro-physics 
as appear to lend support to my own 
views concerning that wonderful and 
beautiful phenomenon, the blue sky. 



CHAPTER II 

The components of the color of the sky, — 
matter and light — Where is the matter ? — Whence 
the light, — from our sun, or from the distant suns ? 
— The Herschel theory and Tyndall's experiment ; 
a bottle of sky — The impregnable wall of the 
sidereal city — Spring's criticism of Tyndall's ex- 
periment ; the oxygen theory. 

The editor of Popular Astronomy be- 
gan his comment upon my theory of the 
sky by saying: "The conclusion that 
the sky is beyond the stars reached by 
our correspondent, must mean that the 
source of the blue of the sky is beyond 
the stars." My article stated that " color 
is the result of the coming together of 
matter and light- waves ; color has never 
yet been found separated from matter." 
The source of the blue therefore was 
matter and light. I suggested that the 
matter was beyond the stars, but my 

12 177 



1 78 FINITE AND INFINITE 

article did not state what I thought as 
to the source of the other element of the 
color, — light. It had not occurred to me 
that there could be any other possible 
source than the sidereal universe of suns. 
But I must infer from the above comment 
that the editor of Popular Astronomy 
thoug-ht I located both ing-redients of the 
color — matter and light — beyond the 
stars. I did not think so then, nor do I 
now. The idea is almost inconceivable, 
and is entirely unneeded to account for 
the light that would aid in producing the 
color effects, as the stars would furnish 
that. The light-waves from these mill- 
ions of shining suns radiate toward the 
sky-envelope in all directions. The far- 
ther they are from us the brighter they 
shine there, and, as stellar evolution is in 
actual progress there, millions of bright 
suns are near enough to shine upon it 
with far stronger light than any star in 
the heavens brings to us. Our own sun, 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 179 

which seems to be fairly near the centre 
of the stars, would furnish no appreci- 
able part of the light that gives us that 
far distant sky. 

The editor of Popular Astronomy then 
made this further comment: "The fact 
that the blue of the sky is intensified, 
for instance, when observed from the 
tops of mountains, rather supports the 
idea that the blue color is an atmospheric 
phenomenon rather than one produced 
in the far-off star spaces," Now this is 
hardly the case. The fact is that this 
intensification of the color of the sky, as 
seen from the tops of mountains, is con- 
sistent with either of the two theories ; 
standing alone, it does not support one 
any more than the other. But taken in 
connection with the other fact mentioned 
in my article, that we can, notwith- 
standing this increasing intensity of the 
blue, see the stars plainer, proves that, 
whatever it is, it must be beyond them. 



i8o FINITE AND INFINITE 

If it were, for instance, a cloud in our 
atmosphere or elsewhere in space, the 
more intense the color, the more effec- 
tive the veil it would interpose between 
the eyes and all objects beyond itself 

The suofg-estion that the blue of the 
sky is an atmospheric phenomenon was, 
so far as I can discover, first made by 
Sir John Herschel, who died the same 
year that Tyndall's "Fragments of Sci- 
ence" was first published in the United 
States by D. Appleton & Co., 1871. 
In that book Tyndall has a lecture on 
" Chemical Rays, and the Structure and 
Light of the Sky," which is, in the book, 
prefaced by a page of quotation from 
Herschel settingf forth the latter's views 
on this subject of the blue color of the 
sky ; and the lecture is an effort to show 
that this is caused by very small particles 
of dust in our upper atmosphere, and 
the lig-ht of the sun reflected from them. 

Tyndall's experiment, whereby he at- 



A FINITE UNIVERSE i8i 

tempted to prove this, can be under- 
stood from reading the lecture above 
referred to, but apparently the fact that 
he was aided in explaining it to his 
hearers, by apparatus upon the lecture 
stage, prevented him from being as clear 
in statement as if he had been writing a 
book. Therefore, instead of trying to 
convey an idea of his experiment by 
quoting from his lecture, I will give a 
clearer and simpler statement of it from 
Wallace's book, " Man's Place in the 
Universe," page 248. 

" If a glass cylinder, several feet long, is filled 
with pure air from which all solid particles have 
been removed by filtering and passing over red- 
hot platinum wires, and a ray of electric light is 
passed through it, the interior, when viewed later- 
ally, appears quite dark, the light passing through 
in a straight line and not illuminating the air. 
But if a little more air is passed through the filter, 
but so rapidly as to allow the minutest particles of 
dust to enter with it, the vessel becomes gradually 
filled with a blue haze, which gradually deepens 



1 82 FINITE AND INFINITE 

into a beautiful blue, comparable with that of the 
sky." 

This description lacks some portions 
of the experiment described by Tyndall, 
which requires an air-pump to be used 
in changing the air in the tube. It ap- 
pears also from Tyndall' s statement, p. 
355, that the blue color in the tube is 
transitory, — soon passes away, and the 
cloud changes to "whitish blue." In 
that important respect it seems to very 
imperfectly represent the sky, the color 
of which is absolutely persistent every- 
where and at all times when there are 
no clouds to hinder seeing it. However, 
this loss of color might arise from pre- 
cipitation of the dust, and so, let us sup- 
pose the dust to be kept in a constant 
state of agitation, or that, from any cause, 
the color in the tube becomes a perma- 
nent thing : — Is this question disposed of 
by simply showing that the color of sky- 
blue can be produced thus ? Wallace 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 183 

refers to it as a "haze," and Tyndall 
constantly refers to it as a "cloud," — at 
first a ■white cloud : pages 247 to 253, We 
often see white clouds in the heavens. 
They shut what lies beyond them from 
our sight. We also see blue clouds and 
red ones, — none of them are transparent. 
Here is the Crux of the Tyndall theory. 
How are we going to see the stars, sun 
and moon through a blue sky-cloud hung 
above us in our own atmosphere ? We 
do see sun, moon, and stars ; and does 
not this fact compel us to reject the 
theory that they lie beyond the sky ? 
The two elements of Tyndall' s sky-cloud 
can exist beyond the stars, as well as in 
our atmosphere. The matter may be 
there as well as it may be here. The 
light is certainly there, — the starlight. 
Both elements may also be in our atmos- 
phere, — the attenuated matter may be 
floating there. The light is certainly there, 
— sunlight by day, starlight by night. So 



1 84 FINITE AND INFINITE 

far Tyndall's theory is just as good as 
mine, for we each conjecture the matter, 
and assign it to different places, and we 
know that the lig-ht is in each of these 
places. But the trouble with Tyndall's 
explanation is that it puts this blue sky- 
cloud in a place where it cannot be, be- 
cause we can see the stars, which we 
could not do if the sky was where he 
supposed it to be, and we are driven to 
the other and only alternative — that the 
sky is beyond the stars, — the raw mate- 
rial for the making of future suns and 
worlds ; the impregnable wall of the si- 
dereal city, through which nothing from 
within can escape, nothing from without 
break in. There may be other systems 
of suns and worlds in other parts of in- 
finite space, but if one of these "out- 
landers " should break from its mooring 
we need not fear it. The little meteor 
igniting in our outer atmosphere and 
turning to gas, gives good assurance of 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 185 

what would happen to such stray sun. 
It would only serve to enlarge our gase- 
ous bulwark by plunging into it. 

Professor Spring, on the other hand, 
in a lecture devoted to this question, 
which he delivered before the Helvetic 
Society of Natural Sciences, in 1904, 
criticises Tyndall's experiment. From 
an abstract of this lecture, published in 
the Revue Scientifiqtie, the following quo- 
tations are made in the Literary Digest, 
October 15, 1904 : 

' ' Such a medium ' * (the minute dust particles 
of Tyndall's experiment) " may reflect an unusual 
proportion of waves of short lengths, so that it will 
appear reddish by transmitted light and bluish by 
reflected light. Besides this, the plane of polariza- 
tion in such a medium is situated as Tyndall's ex- 
periments indicate. Now, Spring, by absorbing 
the blue rays of the sky, has demonstrated that the 
polarization of the sky's light is not a sufficient 
proof of the optical origin of the blue, since he 
shows that other rays are also polarized. . . . 
Lord Rayleigh's theory would rather lead us to 



1 86 FINITE AND INFINITE 

expect a violet color for the sky, which experi- 
ments with a long tube confirm. Besides, the dust 
of all kinds that renders the atmosphere turbid 
does not rise higher than looo to 2000 metres . . 
. . . ., and the weight and electric state of the 
air make it impossible for its particles to re- 
main at rest and hasten their combination into 
flakes. 

" M. Spring has made a series of original ex- 
periments which prove that a turbid medium will 
not appear blue to an observer plunged in that 
medium, unless it has actually a blue color of its 
own. Finally, in the case of the atmosphere, M. 
Spring explains, relying on a calculation based on 
the properties of oxygen in the liquid state, that 
the amount of this gas contained in the air, with- 
out counting the ozone and other bodies, will suf- 
fice to give the medium a sufficiently intense blue 
coloration to explain the appearances that are ob- 
served at different heights in the celestial vault. 
The variations of intensity in the blue and its thin- 
ning out in certain directions would be due to the 
dust which was formerly thought capable of caus- 
ing its color. The sky is really more blue where 
there is less dust in the direction of the visual 
ray." 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 187 

Consideration will be given to these 
conflicting theories of Wallace and Spring 
in the next chapter. But I wish to re- 
mind the reader that, as shown by the 
quotation just made, Professor Spring 
lays stress upon the same fact mentioned 
in my article sent to Popular Astronomy 
and referred to in Chapter I. : "The blue 
of the sky becomes intensified to the eye 
when observed from the tops of moun- 
tains or in elevated regions, where there 
is scarcity of vapor and rarity of atmos- 
phere." Professor Spring says, the less 
dust the deeper the blue color. 



CHAPTER III 

" Man's Place in the Universe' ' ; Wallace's theory 
of a dust-sky — The constant sky and the fickle 
wind — Inconceivable elements in the Wallace 
theory — Its self-contradictions — A transparent, 
opaque cloud that you see through and cannot 
see through as you wish — Density in the line 
of vision — Possible significance of the fact that 
oxygen is blue. 

I EXPECT to make some further quo- 
tations from Wallace's book, for he is 
the most modern and thorough exponent 
of the Herschel and Tyndall theory of 
the sky, and has added thereto some 
ideas of his own. But first let me say 
a word about the book itself. " Man's 
Place in the Universe" was written in 
support of the author's suggestion that 
our earth is probably the only world in 
the sidereal universe which has existed 
for a sufficient period under the requisite 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 189 

conditions for the production and evolu- 
tion of forms of life into anything so 
high as Man. This suggestion has 
found very little following in the scien- 
tific world, and it seems to me that 
the book falls short of establishing it. 
But the book is, nevertheless, a magnifi- 
cent collection of the latest cosmic news 
from all fields, and any one having ability 
to dissociate its information from its au- 
thor's theory will get much good from it. 
A theory disagreed with seems to pre- 
vent a great many people from getting 
much out of an otherwise valuable book. 
For instance, Donnelly's "Atlantis" is a 
wonderful compilation of valuable and 
interesting- information inaccessible to 
most people, — obtainable only by indus- 
trious research among dusty old manu- 
scripts in out-of-the-way corners of the 
world ; yet, judging from what was said 
of it, there were many who failed to get 
much of its great store of good things, 



190 FINITE AND INFINITE 

because, forsooth, the author attempted 
to prove that once upon a tuTie there 
Hved a prosperous, civiHzed people upon 
an island or continent now sunk in the 
waters of the Atlantic. So with this 
new book of Wallace's. Judging from 
what I have read about it, that book has 
had even more than the usual amount 
of criticism from people who turned over 
its leaves, but certainly did not read it, 
in any true sense of the word. 

It may be that the view which Mr. 
Wallace thinks " the various results of 
modern science lend support to," — 
namely, "that our earth is the only in- 
habited planet, not only in the Solar 
System but in the whole stellar uni- 
verse," will not seem to others as well 
supported as it seems to him. But 
there is no gainsaying the fact that 
Wallace's book does prove that if there 
are other inhabited planets in the uni- 
verse they must be quite few and far be- 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 191 

tween. He has assuredly taken that 
question out of the field of fancy and 
conjecture and placed it firmly within 
the domain of science. 

Wallace's theory is that the blue of 
the sky is caused by the sun shining 
upon exceedingly small particles of dust 
floating in the upper atmosphere. But 
let Mr. Wallace tell this himself: 

" Another phenomenon that indicates the uni- 
versal presence of dust to enormous heights in the 
atmosphere is the blue color of the sky. This is 
caused by the presence of such excessively minute 
particles of dust through an enormous thickness 
of the higher atmosphere — probably up to a height 
of twenty or thirty miles or more — that they re- 
flect only the light of short wave-lengths from the 
blue end of the spectrum. This also has been 
proved by experiment. " — "Man's Place in the 
Universe," pages 247, 248. 

Then follows the description of that ex- 
periment fully quoted in the last chapter. 



192 FINITE AND INFINITE 

"If there were no dust in the atmosphere, the 
sky would appear black even at noon." — Page 
249. 

"As the blue color of the sky is universal, the 
whole of the higher atmosphere must be pervaded 
by myriads of ultramicroscopical particles, which 
by reflecting the blue rays only . . . give us the 
azure vault of heaven." — Page 252. 

"Every dust-particle is of course much heavier 
than air, and in a comparatively short time, if the 
atmosphere were still, would fall to the ground. 
Tyndall found that the air of a cellar under the 
Royal Institution in Albemarle Street, which had 
not been opened for several months, was so pure 
that the path of a beam of electric light sent 
through it was quite invisible. But careful experi- 
ments show that not only is the air in continual 
motion, but the motion is excessively irregular, 
being hardly ever quite horizontal, but upward and 
downward and in every intermediate direction, 
as well as in countless whirls and eddies ; and this 
complexity of motion must extend to a vast height, 
probably to iifty miles or more, in order to pro- 
vide a sufficient thickness of those minutest parti- 
cles which produce the blue of the sky. ' ' — Page 
252. 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 193 

Mr. Wallace argues also that without 
this dust there could be no rain, so that 
it is the cause both of rain and of the 
blue of the sky ; 

"Over every part of the vast Pacific Ocean, 
whose islands must produce a minimum of dust, 
the sky is always blue, and its thousand isles do 
not suffer for want of rain. Over the great forest 
plain of the Amazon valley, where the production 
of dust must be very small, there is yet abundance 
of rain-clouds and of rain. This is due primarily 
to the two great natural sources of dust, — the active 
volcanos, together with the deserts and more arid 
regions of the world ; and, in the second place, to 
the density and wonderful mobility of the atmos- 
phere, which not only carries the finest dust- 
particles to an enormous height, but distributes 
them through its whole extent with such wonder- 
ful uniformity." — Page 252. 

Yes, the uniformity of that distribution 
of dust must certainly be "wonderful," 
for without such uniformity of distribu- 
tion, and without absolute persistence of 
13 



194 FINITE AND INFINITE 

uniformity, there would frequently occur 
black spots and blotches in the sky 
samples of that blackness which Mr. 
Wallace tells us the whole sky would 
present were it not for this dust. No 
such break has ever occurred in the blue 
of the sky. As Wallace says, " The blue 
color of the sky is universal." It is not 
only universal, but it is absolutely per- 
manent, unchanging, constant. In these 
aspects it surely does not suggest a phe- 
nomenon caused by dust transported 
and held in space by such a fickle carrier 
as he described the atmosphere to be, 
" m continual motion ; a motion exces- 
sively irregular . , . upward and down- 
ward and in every intermediate direction 
as well as in countless eddies and 
whirls." Nor does the constancy and 
universality of this blue color suggest an 
ingredient such as dust, which is not 
producible upon that three-fourths of the 
earth covered by water, and scarcely 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 195 

producible upon that large area of the 
remainder covered by forests and eternal 
snows, while it is wofully plentiful in 
those regions which nevertheless have 
no rain during an excessively dusty sea- 
son lasting six or eight months of the 
year. It seems to be taxing credulity 
too much to ask us to believe that this 
constant, calm, unchangeable, immovable 
blue is produced by such an unevenly 
distributed thing as dust carried and held 
in place by what has been our best 
natural simile for inconstancy, " the 
fickle wind." One more quotation from 
Mr. Wallace's book on this point ; 

* ' Since it has been known that liquid oxygen is 
blue, many people have concluded that this ex- 
plains the blue color of the sky. But it has really 
nothing to do with the point at issue. The blue 
of the liquid oxygen becomes so excessively faint 
in the gas, further attenuated as it is by the color- 
less nitrogen, that it would have no perceptible 
color in the whole thickness of our atmosphere. 



196 FINITE AND INFINITE 

Again, if it had a perceptible blue tint we could 
not see it against the blackness of space behind it ; 
but white objects seen through it, such as the moon 
and clouds, should appear blue, which they do 
not do." 

I want to call the reader's particular 
attention to the last sentence of the fore- 
going quotation. Am I not warranted 
in saying that this part of Mr. Wallace's 
argument, though otherwise intended, 
lends support to my theory of the sky ? 
Let us see. In the unpublished portion 
of my article sent to Popular Astronoiny 
in 1894 I said : 

" Any substance capable of color and occupy- 
ing the space between us and the stars, in sufficient 
quantity to look as blue as the sky, must have such 
density in the line of vision that it would either 
shut out the light of the stars altogether as a blue 
cloud would do, or at least seem to do so by per- 
mitting none but the blue rays to come to us." 

It will be apparent that this was said 
to show the utter untenability of Tyndall's 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 197 

theory which Mr. Wallace adopts. But 
does not Mr. Wallace admit this very 
evident inference, when he argues that 
if the atmosphere were blue, " white ob- 
jects seen through it, such as the moon 
and clouds, should all appear blue, which 
they do not do" ? 

The term "density in the line of 
vision " will be readily understood by any 
one who has seen a fog. We see for a 
greater or less distance through a fog, 
but there comes a distance from the eye 
at last, where the particles constituting 
the fog and occupying the space between 
our eyes and an object have finally 
grown so numerous in the aggregate 
that we cannot see that object, although 
we see more or less indistinctly other 
objects nearer to us. This is what is 
meant by density in the line of vision. 
The fog may be no more dense in one 
place than another, but if we attempt 
to look through it, there is an accumula- 



198 FINITE AND INFINITE 

tion of weak densities which in the end 
make a total density sufficient to hide 
an object from us. Now, in the prop- 
osition controverted by Mr. Wallace 
in the foregoing quotation, there is 
the fundamental fact that liquid oxy- 
gen is blue. But the air is not liquid 
oxygen ; eighty per cent, of it is colorless 
nitrogen gas ; the remnant is oxygen 
gas. True ; but gas and liquid are only 
different degrees of density, and this 
quality of density may be obtained in the 
line of vision by piling up a sufficient 
depth of gas, as well as by changing it 
into the more condensed form of a liquid. 
This, of course, Mr. Wallace does not 
dispute ; he admits it, but says that if 
oxygen gas were sufficiently deep to have 
that density in the line of vision, then it 
would necessarily obstruct our view of 
the moon, or make it look blue, which 
would be practically the same thing ; for 
a blue moon on a blue sky, especially 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 199 

when both were made blue by the same 
cause, could not be seen, so as to be 
discerned, or distinguished from the sky. 

I submit that Mr. Wallace's argument 
is utterly inconsistent. If it be true as 
he insists, and all must admit, that a 
depth of oxygen sufficient to look as 
blue as the sky would shut out the moon 
from our vision, why would not the same 
result follow from this blue cloud of dust 
which he chooses to substitute for the 
oxygen ? His argument is good : it de- 
molishes Professor Spring's theory of the 
sky as to atmospheric oxygen, but it de- 
stroys his own theory equally and sim- 
ilarly. 

The color of oxygen may have a good 
deal to do with the color of the sky, 
nevertheless. One-half of the total 
weight of our earth is made up of 
oxygen. We have every reason to ex- 
pect that this is just about the propor- 
tion of oxygen to other chemicals that 



200 FINITE AND INFINITE 

exists throughout space ; and when we 
get beyond the stars, into that infinite 
storehouse of raw material, it will not be 
denied that there is sufficient depth of 
oxygen there to cause the phenomenon 
of the blue sky. 



CHAPTER IV 

The prevailing idea that the universe is finite — 
Views of Miss Gierke — Professor Newcomb's 
mathematical demonstration that an infinite star 
system would give us a blazing sky — The ten- 
tative attitude of those who hesitate to accept 
this view — Other possible explanations why 
the whole sky is not as bright as the sun : ether 
may not be a perfect light carrier ; dark suns 
and other opaque matter might intercept light — 
Tyndall's experiments with light, and his theory 
of its transmission. 

In closing his comments upon my 
theory of the sky, the editor of Popular 
Astronomy said ; 

* ' Again, we cannot certainly affirm that light 
does not lose something or is not in some way 
changed in passing through the vast depths of 
ethereal space. We wish we had definite knowl- 
edge concerning the possible varying conditions 
of light as it sweeps through space at the awful 
velocity of 186,000 miles per second." 



202 FINITE AND INFINITE 

That was only ten years ago ; yet 
every one of those years gave more to 
science than the twelve centuries be- 
tween Ptolemy and Copernicus. Since 
1895 there has occurred a marked shift- 
ing of scientific opinion away from the 
tentative attitude upon this question as 
to absorption of light in traversing space, 
and toward the opposite view, based 
upon certain facts which are beyond 
dispute. 

Miss A. M. Gierke, the eminent Irish 
astronomer, in her book, "The System 
of the Stars," says : 

" The sidereal world presents us, to all appear- 
ance, with a finite system. . . . The probabil- 
ity amounts almost to certainty that star-strewn 
space is of measurable dimensions. For from in- 
numerable stars a limitless sum-total of radiations 
should be derived, by which darkness would be 
banished from our skies ; and the * intense inane, ' 
glowing with the mingled beams of suns individu- 
ally indistinguishable, would bewilder our feeble 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 203 

senses with its monotonous splendor. . . . Un- 
less, that is to say, light suffers some degree of 
enfeeblement in space. . . . But there is not 
a particle of evidence that any such toll is ex- 
acted ; contrary indications are strong ; and the 
assertion that its payment is inevitable depends 
upon analogies which may be wholly visionary. 
We are then for the present entitled to disregard 
the problematical effect of a more than dubious 
cause. ' ' 

Professor Newcomb, an American as- 
tronomer of world-wide reputation, says 
in his book, "The Stars": 

"That collection of stars which we call the 
universe is limited in extent. The smallest stars 
that we see with the most powerful telescopes are 
not, for the most part, more distant than those 
a grade brighter, but are mostly stars of less lumi- 
nosity situated in the same regions. ' ' 

At another place in the same book, 
Mr. Newcomb says : 

"There is a law of optics which throws some 
light on the question. Suppose the stars to be 



204 FINITE AND INFINITE 

scattered through infinite space so that every great 
portion of space is, in the general average, equally 
rich in stars. Then at some great distance we 
describe a sphere having its centre in our sun. 
Outside this sphere describe another one of a 
greater radius, and beyond this other spheres at 
equal distances apart indefinitely. Thus we shall 
have an endless succession of spherical shells, each 
of the same thickness. The volume of each of 
these shells will be nearly proportional to the 
squares of the diameters of the spheres which bound 
it. Hence, each of the regions will contain a 
number of stars increasing as the square of the 
radius of the region. Since the amount of light 
we receive from each star is as the inverse square 
of its distance, it follows that the sum-total of the 
light received from each of these spherical shells 
will be equal. Thus as we add sphere after sphere 
we add equal amounts of light without limit. The 
result would be that if the system of stars extended 
out indefinitely the whole heavens would be filled 
with a blaze of light as bright as the sun. ' ' 

Perhaps Professor Newcomb's esti- 
mate that an infinite universe of stars 
would give us a heavens "as bright as 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 205 

the sun" was made without taking into 
consideration the effect of one bright 
star in eclipsing another. Every bright 
star must contain opaque as well as 
brilliant matter, and the effect of opaque 
matter in stopping light must be the 
same inside of a body having a lumi- 
nous surface as it would be anywhere 
else. The fact is that we do not re- 
ceive all the light radiated from any 
star. The opaque matter within the 
star prevents the light upon the oppo- 
site side from coming our way. Never- 
theless, if there were an infinite number 
of stars, the heavens would surely be 
covered with starlight and would be 
brighter than any portion of the Milky 
Way. 

In Harper s Magazine for November, 
1904, Professor Newcomb sets forth his 
mathematical demonstration with more 
detail. Assuming, as a basic unit, a 
sphere large enough to extend upon all 



2o6 FINITE AND INFINITE 

sides of the sun as far as the nearest 
star, Alpha Centauri ; the next sphere 
outside with a diameter twice as great 
is eight times as large and is found to 
contain eight stars. Imagine a system 
of spheres extended outward indefinitely, 
of such dimensions that each contains 
eight times as much volume as the next 
one inside of it. Continuing, he says ; 

• ' The general trend of such measures up to the 
present time is that the number of stars in any of 
these spheres will be about equal to the units of 
volume which they comprise when we take for 
this unit the smallest and innermost of the spheres, 
having a radius 400,000 times the sun's distance. 
We are thus enabled to form some general idea of 
how thickly the stars are sown through space. We 
cannot claim any numerical exactness for this 
idea, but in the absence of better methods it does 
afford us some basis for reasoning. . . . Let us 
suppose that there are 125,000,000 stars in the 
heavens. This is an exceedingly rough estimate, 
but let us make the supposition for the time being. 
Accepting the view that they are nearly equally 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 207 

scattered throughout space, it will follow that they 
must be contained within a volume equal to 
125,000,000 times the sphere we have taken as 
our unit. We find the distance of the surface of 
this sphere by extracting the cube root of this 
number, which gives us 500. We may therefore 
say, as the result of a very rough estimate, that 
the number of stars we have supposed would be 
contained within a distance found by multiplying 
400,000 times the distance of the sun by 500; 
that is, that they are contained within a region 
whose boundary is 200,000,000 times the distance 
of the sun. This is a distance through which 
light would travel in about 3300 years. 

*' It is not impossible that the number of stars is 
much greater than we have supposed. Let us grant 
that there are eight times as many, or one thousand 
millions. Then we should have to extend the 
boundary of our universe twice as far, carrying it 
to a distance which light would require 6600 
years to travel. . . . 

"The inquiring reader may here ask another 
question. Granting that all the stars we can see 
are contained within this limit, may there not be 
any number of stars without the limit which are 
invisible only because they are too far away to be 
seen? 



2o8 FINITE AND INFINITE 

' ' This question may be answered quite defi- 
nitely if we grant that light from the most dis- 
tant stars meets with no obstruction in reaching 
us. The most conclusive answer is afforded by 
the measure of starlight. If the stars extended 
out indefinitely, then the number of those of each 
order of magnitude would be nearly four times 
that of the magnitude next brighter. For exam- 
ple, we should have nearly four times as many 
stars of the sixth magnitude as of the fifth ; nearly 
four times as many seventh as of the sixth, and so 
on indefinitely. Now, it is actually found that 
while this ratio of increase is true for the brighter 
stars, it is not so for the fainter ones, and that the 
increase in the number of the latter rapidly fall 
off when we make count of the fainter telescopic 
stars. In fact, it has long been known that, were 
the universe infinite in extent and the stars equally 
scattered through all space, the whole heavens 
would blaze with the light of countless millions of 
distant stars separately invisible even with the 
telescope. 

"The only way in which this conclusion can 
be invalidated is by the possibility that the light 
of the stars is in some way extinguished or ob- 
structed in its passage through space. A theory to 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 209 

this effect was propounded by Struve nearly a cen- 
tury ago ; but it has since been found that the facts 
as he set them forth do not justify the conclusion, 
which was, in fact, rather hypothetical. The 
theories of modern science converge toward the 
view that, in the pure ether of space, no single 
ray of light can ever be lost, no matter how far it 
may travel. But there is another possible cause 
for the extinction of light. During the last few 
years discoveries of dark and therefore invisible 
stars have been made by means of the spectro- 
scope with a success which would have been in- 
credible a very few years ago, and which even 
to-day must excite wonder and admiration. The 
general conclusion is that, besides the shining stars 
which exist in space, there may be any number 
of dark ones, forever invisible in our telescopes. 
May it not be that these bodies are so numerous 
as to cut off the light which we would otherwise 
receive from the more distant bodies of the uni- 
verse ? It is of course impossible to answer this 
question in a positive way, but the probable con- 
clusion is a negative one. We may say with cer- 
tainty that dark stars are not so numerous as to 
cut off any important part of the light from the 
stars of the Milky Way, because if they did, the 
14 



2IO FINITE AND INFINITE 

latter would not be so clearly seen as it is. Since 
we have reason to believe that the Milky Way 
comprises the more distant stars of our system, we 
may feel fairly confident that not much light can 
be cut off by dark bodies from the most distant 
region to which our telescopes can penetrate. Up 
to this distance we see the stars just as they are. 
Even within the limit of the universe as we under- 
stand it, it is likely that more than one-half the 
stars which actually exist are too faint to be seen 
by human vision, even when armed with the most 
powerful telescopes. But their invisibility is due 
only to their distance and the faintness of their 
intrinsic light, and not to any obstructing agency." 

It should be said that those who do 
not accept this view do not reject it. 
They are merely "withholding assent for 
the present. Scientists, as a rule, are a 
cautious class. History has taught them 
that scientific bubbles have sometimes 
remained intact for centuries. Experi- 
ence has proved to them that in science 
it is necessary to think more than the 
proverbial "twice," a good many times 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 211 

more, before accepting unconditionally 
theories so apparently sound that no 
present argument can be made against 
them. This is a salutary mental attitude. 
There will always be with us those who 
have the "scientific imagination," and 
without whom the most important revela- 
tions would remain hidden ; but imagina- 
tion may be a false as well as a true 
guide, and until its pronouncements are 
subjected to the test of rigid cross-exami- 
nation and long probation, we wisely 
withhold our opinion, although we may be 
strongly inclined to believe them valid. 
All of us are able to see the real flaws 
in each other's theories better than those 
that are in our own, and, whether we sub- 
mit with good or ill grace, we must sub- 
mit to the judgment of others in matters 
of science. 

Those who hesitate about accepting 
the theory that the universe of stars is 
of finite extent are withheld by the two 



212 FINITE AND INFINITE 

considerations mentioned by Professor 
Newcomb, viz. : 

1. Starlight may possibly lose enough 
in passing through vast spaces, from lack 
of sufficient carrying power in the as- 
sumed medium, ether, to account for the 
fact that the light of the stars occupies so 
comparatively small a portion of the sky. 

2. There may be, in the intervening 
spaces between us and an infinite num- 
ber of bright stars whose light does not 
reach us, a sufficient quantity of opaque 
matter, dark suns, and meteoric stones 
and dust, to totally intercept their light, 
so that the stars that have been brought 
to human ken through the eye, the tele- 
scope, and the camera, may, after all, 
constitute only a small fraction of the 
stars in space. 

The first of these suggestions — that 
light may become wholly lost by mere 
distance alone — is, of course, beyond the 
realm of experiment or test. In order 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 213 

to understand it the reader should first 
know the theory of light and its trans- 
mission, now accepted by physicists as 
being the most probable. Although 
Tyndall was not exactly the first pioneer 
in this field of experimental research, he 
was among the first, and I do not think 
any one has improved upon his explana- 
tion of it, in "Fragments of Science," 
pages 1 70 to I "]},, which I quote in full, as 
follows : 

* ' When we see a platinum wire raised gradu- 
ally to a white heat, and emitting in succession 
all the colors of the spectrum, we are simply con- 
scious of a series of changes in the condition of 
our own eyes. We do not see the actions in 
which these successive colors originate, but the 
mind irresistibly infers that the appearance of the 
colors corresponds to certain contemporaneous 
changes in the wire. What is the nature of these 
changes ? In virtue of what condition does the 
wire radiate at all ? We must now look from the 
wire as a whole to its constituent atoms. Could 
we see those atoms, even before the electric current 



214 FINITE AND INFINITE 

has begun to act upon them, we should find them 
in a state of vibration. In this vibration, indeed, 
consists such warmth as the wire then possesses. 
Locke enunciated this idea with great precision, 
and it seems placed beyond the pale of doubt by 
the excellent quantitative researches of Mr. Joule. 
* Heat,' says Locke, 'is a very brisk agitation of 
the insensible parts of the object, which produce in 
us that sensation from which we denominate the 
object hot ; so what in our sensation is heat in the 
object is nothing but motion.* When the electric 
current, still feeble, begins to pass through the 
wire, its first act is to intensify the vibrations 
already existing, by causing the atoms to swing 
through wider ranges. Technically speaking, the 
amplitudes of the oscillations are increased. The 
current does this, however, without altering the 
periods of the old vibrations, or the times in which 
they were executed. But besides intensifying the 
old vibrations the current generates new and 
more rapid ones, and when a certain definite 
rapidity has been attained the wire begins to glow. 
The color first exhibited is red, which corresponds 
to the lowest rate of vibration of which the eye 
is able to take cognizance. By augmenting the 
strength of the electric current more rapid vibra- 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 215 

tions are introduced, and orange rays appear. A 
quicker rate of vibration produces yellow, a still 
quicker, green ; and by further augmenting the 
rapidity, we pass through blue, indigo, and violet, 
to the extreme ultra-violet rays. ' ' 

Tyndall has just told us, "the first 
color exhibited is red, which corresponds 
to the lowest rate of vibration of which 
the eye is able to take cognizance." 
The "ultra-violet rays," which he here 
mentions, are, upon the other hand, the 
result of vibrations too rapid to be cog- 
nized as colors by the sense of vision. 
While their existence was known in 
Tyndall's day, through chemical effects 
wrought by them, none of them were 
actually discovered until Roentgen cap- 
tured those which now bear his name. 
Others have been found since, and the 
hunt for them bids fair to continue with 
success. 

"Such are the changes which science recog- 
nizes in the wire itself, as concurrent with the 



2i6 FINITE AND INFINITE 

visual changes taking place in the eye. But what 
connects the wire with this organ ? By what 
means does it send such intelligence of its varying 
condition to the optic nerve? Heat being, as 
defined by Locke, * a very brisk agitation of the 
insensible parts of an object,' it is readily conceiv- 
able that on touching a heated body the agitation 
may communicate itself to the adjacent nerves, 
and announce itself to them as light or heat. But 
the optic nerve does not touch the hot platinum, 
and hence the pertinence of the question, By 
what agency are the vibrations of the wire trans- 
mitted to the eye? 

' ' The answer to this question involves perhaps 
the most important physical conception that the 
mind of man has yet achieved : the conception of 
a medium filling space and fitted mechanically for 
the transmission of the vibrations of light and heat, 
as air is fitted for the transmission of sound. This 
medium is called the luminiferozis ether. Every 
vibration of every atom of our platinum wire raises 
in this ether a wave, which speeds through it at 
the rate of 186,000 miles a second. The ether 
suffers no rupture of continuity at the surface of 
the eye, the intermolecular spaces of the various 
humors are filled with it ; hence the waves gen- 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 217 

erated by the glowing platinum can cross these 
humors and impinge on the optic nerve at the 
back of the eye. Thus the sensation of light re- 
duces itself to the communication of motion. Up 
to this point we deal with pure mechanics ; but 
the subsequent translation of the shock of the ethe- 
real waves into consciousness eludes the analysis 
of science. As an oar dipping into the Cam gen- 
erates systems of waves, which, speeding from the 
centre of disturbance, finally stir the sedges on the 
river's bank, so do the vibrating atoms generate 
in the surrounding ether undulations, which finally 
stir the filaments of the retina. The motion thus 
imparted is transmitted with measurable and not 
very great velocity to the brain, where, by process 
which science does not even tend to unravel, the 
tremor of the nervous matter is converted into the 
conscious impression of light." 

The reader will understand from the 
foregoing what is implied in the supposi- 
tion that light may be lost in transmis- 
sion on account of distance alone. It is 
conceded on all hands that such loss 
could not happen if this ether which is 
supposed to carry the light is absolutely 



2i8 FINITE AND INFINITE 

and equally elastic throughout space. If, 
however, this quality of elasticity be more 
or less imperfect throughout ether space, 
or in parts thereof, then the light of the 
most distant stars might fail to reach us, 
not through any defect or want of energy 
of motion in the source of light-waves, 
but from inefficiency of the medium to 
which the vibratory motion is supposed 
to be imparted, and through which it 
is assumed the light must come to us, if 
it come at all. 

It may as well be said here that there 
is no proof whatever, and perhaps never 
will be, that any such thing as the so- 
called "ether" exists, and, as the point 
now under consideration is based upon 
the assumption that it does actually exist, 
it will be necessary to inform the reader 
as to the status of scientific opinion 
concerning the so-called " luminiferous 
ether." This will be done in the next 
chapter. 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 219 

The reader will readily see that if light 
does not need any carrier, but can carry 
itself through space that is absolutely 
empty, nothing could prevent all the 
light of all the stars in space from reach- 
ing us, except intervening opaque matter. 
Professor Newcomb's mode of dealing 
with the latter suggestion seems pretty 
satisfactory, and the opinions of several 
other astronomers upon this point will be 
shown in future chapters. 



CHAPTER V 

Necessity of examining Science as to its views 
about the "ether" — Sloane's statement of the 
ether theory — Professor Comstock's description 
of wave radiation — Humboldt's history of the 
ether idea ; the akasa of the ancient Hindu 
philosophers transplanted from India to Greece, 
"precisely similar to the vibrating light-ether 
of Huygens, Hooke, and modern physicists" — 
Irving* s remarks about the ether — Has the real 
question been asked? — The worthless half of 
experimental science. 

The theory that the sky is an envelope 
of gas or other primary form of matter 
surrounding the star-system necessarily 
implies finite dimensions for that system. 
This idea of a "finite universe" is gain- 
ingground rapidly at the present time, and 
should it be generally accepted would, as 
it seems to me, make it necessary to be- 
lieve that outside of that system there 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 221 

must exist, in a primary form, material 
elements similar to those from which that 
system has been evolved. We thus step 
quite logically from the finite universe to 
its envelope of matter in some form, and 
just as naturally from that to the idea 
that with the light of countless suns shin- 
ing upon it, we ought to be able to see 
it, and hence that we do see it, — that it 
is the sky. 

Those scientists who believe the star 
system to be finite, advance, as the chief 
ground of their belief, that were it infinite, 
the whole heavens would be ablaze with 
the light of the stars. Against this propo- 
sition it is urged by others that perhaps 
this would not of necessity be the case, 
inasmuch as it may be possible that 
light cannot be transmitted indefinitely 
through space, — that there may be a 
limit to the conductivity of the " lumi- 
niferous ether," and that the fact of the 
whole sky not being ablaze with star- 



222 FINITE AND INFINITE 

light is consequently just as much proof 
of such defect in the ether as it is of the 
finite bounds of the star system, since 
this absence of light from the sky would 
follow from one of these causes as easily 
as from the other. As this objection to 
the theory of a finite universe is based 
upon the assumption that ether is a fact, 
let us see what scientists have to say 
about it. 

I will begin by quoting T. O'Connor 
Sloane, because he gives the best state- 
ment I have found as to the supposed 
qualities of this supposed substance. In 
Chapter I. of his little book, " Electricity 
Simplified," he says : 

"There are in nature certain mysteries, if such 
a name does not appear too poetical, which have 
never been solved and may remain so for all future 
generations. The conservative scientist is apt to 
include among such things gravitation, electricity, 
and perhaps light. To explain the phenomena of 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 223 

light, an almost inconceivable entity termed the 
luminiferous ether has had to be invented. By- 
assuming such a thing to exist and to be endowed 
with almost inconceivable properties, light is ex- 
plained, and its phenomena are brought into the 
domain of mathematics. But no direct proof of 
the existence of the ether has yet been found, and 
we can hardly venture to hope for one. 

"The modern treatment of electricity deals 
with it as representing and including special phe- 
nomena of this ether. Some go so far as pro- 
visionally to define it as being the ether itself, and 
to treat static excitement, magnetism, current 
electricity, etc., as due entirely to different states 
of the ether. 

'*The luminiferous ether is by calculation de- 
duced as being of the following general properties. 
It is supposed to be a medium most resembling a gas 
in constitution, yet possessing rigidity like a solid 
as well as elasticity like that of a gas. Its density 
is equal to nine hundred and thirty-six one-thou- 
sand-million-millionths that of water, or equal to 
that of air at two hundred and ten miles above the 
earth. Its rigidity is one one-thousand-millionth 
that of steel. It is sometimes compared to an all- 
pervading jelly, through which waves of light and 



224 FINITE AND INFINITE 

other radiant energy and of electro-magnetism 
are constantly throbbing. Particles of ordinary 
matter move through it without resistance. It 
interpenetrates the molecules of matter, and hence 
an air-pump is entirely without effect upon it. 
There is no such thing as an ether vacuum (Dan- 
iel). It cannot be excluded from empty space. 

" Such is the hypothetical luminiferous ether, 
an ultra-gaseous body possessing the properties of 
both a solid and of a gas. It should be looked 
upon as an expedient for the present, as something 
most useful in formulating theories, but unproved. 
A theory is often little more than a symmetrical 
skeleton to sustain our laboriously acquired collec- 
tion of facts. The test of the utility or perfection 
of a theory is its ability to foretell what will happen 
under given conditions. It may be able to do this 
and yet be wholly fictitious. 

' ' Light is radiated from one body to another 
across enormous intervals of space. The mind 
cannot conceive of one body acting upon another 
without some connecting medium. The same ap- 
plies to gravitation and electricity. The ether 
originally invented to account for the transmission 
of light through distances of unknown degrees of 
immensity in the case of the heavenly bodies, has 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 225 

been found a useful factor in formulating a theory 
of electricity. 

"If any object is excited electrically, every 
object within its range of action, that is to say, 
which is not screened from its effects, is also 
affected. This involves the same kind of action 
across a space as obtains in the case of light. It 
is termed radiant action and is a manifestation of 
radiant energy. Again, an electric current or the 
poles of a magnet produce magnetic effects in their 
vicinity upon objects not in contact with them. 
This involves action at a distance also. 



"Pulses or waves of electric energy are found 
to act like light, to be capable of transmission 
through some bodies, of reflection from others, and 
of refraction and interference. The relations be- 
tween electrostatic and electromagnetic units indi- 
cate a ratio corresponding to the velocity of light. 
These considerations give direct ground for util- 
izing the theoretical ether as a medium for the 
propagation of electrical disturbances. ' ' 

Professor George C. Comstock, of the 
University of Wisconsin, Secretary of 
IS 



2 26 FINITE AND INFINITE 

the Astronomical and Astrophysical So- 
ciety of America, in his "Text-Book of 
Astronomy," pages 123, 124, gives the 
following clear description of this ether 
theory of the propagation of energy by 
radiation in the form of waves : 

"Drop a bullet or other similar object into a 
bucket of water and observe the circular waves 
which spread from the place where it enters the 
water. These waves are a form of radiant energy, 
but differing from light or heat in that they are 
visibly confined to a single plane, the surface of the 
water, instead of filling the entire surrounding 
space. By varying the size of the bucket, the 
depth of the water, the weight of the bullet, etc. , 
different kinds of waves, big and little, may be 
produced ; but every such set of waves may be 
described and defined in all its principal charac- 
teristics by means of three numbers, viz., the ver- 
tical height of the waves from hollow to crest ; 
the distance of one wave from the next ; and the 
velocity with which the waves travel across the 
water. The last of these quantities is called the 
velocity of propagation ; the second is called the 
wave length ; one-half of the first is called the 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 227 

amplitude ; and all these terms find important ap- 
plications in the theory of light and heat. 

"The energy of the falling bullet, the disturb- 
ance which it produced on entering the water, 
was carried by the waves from the centre to the 
edge of the bucket, but not beyond, for the wave 
can go only so far as the water extends. The 
transfer of energy in this way requires a perfectly 
continuous medium through which the waves may 
travel, and the whole visible universe is supposed to 
be filled with something called ether, which serves 
everywhere as a medium for the transmission of 
radiant energy, just as the water in the experiment 
served as a medium for transmitting in waves the 
energy furnished to it by the falling bullet. The 
student may think of this energy as being trans- 
mitted in spherical waves through the ether, every 
glowing body, such as a star, a candle flame, an arc 
lamp, a hot coal, etc. , being the origin and centre 
of such systems of waves, and determining by its 
own physical and chemical properties the wave 
length and amplitude of the wave systems given 
off." 

I have already spoken of Tyndall as 
one of the first in the field of experi- 



2 28 FINITE AND INFINITE 

mental research concerning the phenom- 
enon of Hght. But neither he nor his 
contemporaries "invented" the ether. It 
seems rather singular that so many mod- 
ern scientific writers are in the habit of 
assuming that the idea of a substance 
or element pervading all space, and 
utilized by nature in the transmission 
of radiant energy, was "invented" by 
scientists of the nineteenth century, and 
christened by them with the name of 
"ether." This, I suspect, is to be ac- 
counted for by the fact that scientific 
research, as well as human effort in other 
directions, is becoming specialized, so 
that the personification formerly known 
as "The man of wide and varied learn- 
ing" is passing away, and is to be found 
now only when this widening of mental 
horizon is a necessary factor in fitting 
one for his work. 

The ether idea is very old indeed, as 
may be seen by reading from Humboldt's 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 229 

"Cosmos," volume iii., pages 31-35. I 
can spare space for only a few quota- 
tions, but they will, I hope, suffice for 
my purpose : 



"Although not only the propagation of light, 
but also a special form of its diminished intensity, 
the resisting medium acting on the periods of 
revolution of Encke's comet, and the evaporation 
of many of the large tails of comets, seem to prove 
that the regions of space which separate cosmical 
bodies are not void, but filled with some kind of 
matter ; we must not omit to draw attention to the 
fact that, among the now current but indefinite 
expressions of '■the air of heaven,'' ^cosmical (non- 
luminous) matter,'' and ^ ether' the latter, which 
has been transmitted to us from the earliest an- 
tiquity of Southern and Western Asia, has not 
always expressed the same idea. Among the 
natural philosophers of India, ether (^akasa) was 
regarded as belonging to the pantschata, or five 
elements, and was supposed to be a fluid of infinite 
subtlety, pervading the whole universe, and con- 
stituting the medium of exciting life as well as of 
propagating sound." 



230 FINITE AND INFINITE 

After describing the form which the 
Hindu idea assumed when it reached 
Greece, Humboldt says : 

" Considered as a medium filling the regions of 
space, the ether of Empedocles presents no other 
analogies excepting those of subtlety and tenuity 
with the ether, by whose transverse vibrations 
modern physicists have succeeded so happily in 
explaining, on purely mathematical principles, the 
propagation of light, with all its properties of 
double refraction, polarization, and interference. 
The natural philosophy of Aristotle further teaches 
that the ethereal substance penetrates all the living 
organisms of the earth, both plants and animals ; 
that it becomes in these the principle of vital heat, 
the very germ of a psychical principle, which, 
uninfluenced by the body, stimulates men to inde- 
pendent activity. These visionary opinions draw 
down ether from the higher regions of space to 
the terrestrial sphere, and represent it as a highly 
rarefied substance constantly penetrating through 
the atmosphere and through solid bodies ; pre- 
cisely similar to the vibrating light-ether of Huy- 
gens, Hooke, and modern physicists. 

' ' The numerous investigations that have been 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 231 

made in recent times regarding the intimate rela- 
tion between light, heat, electricity, and magnet- 
ism, render it far from improbable that, as the 
transverse vibrations of the ether which fills the re- 
gions of space give rise to the phenomena of light, 
the thermal and electro-magnetic phenomena may 
likewise have their origin in analogous kinds of 
motion (currents). It is reserved for future ages 
to make great discoveries in reference to these 
subjects." 

As illustrating the attitude of those 
who combat the idea of " action at a dis- 
tance," I make the following quotation 
from Edward Irving' s book, " How to 
Know the Starry Heavens," published 
in 1 904 : 

" The original idea was that gravitation reaches 
out from one particle to another, even when they 
are separated by great distances, with nothing to 
connect them, — in fact, that there is action at a 
distance without a medium. This idea has had 
to be abandoned, for it is evident that a thing 
cannot act where it is not present. So a connect- 
ing ether has been ' invented' to carry the energy 



232 FINITE AND INFINITE 

of gravitation (and what is known as radiant en- 
ergy) across from one particle of matter to an- 
other. Whether this ether really exists, what it is 
like, and how it acts, are questions that still keep 
scientists busy, and will probably not be settled 
for some time to come." (Pages 171, 172.) 

"It is now concluded that all the different 
forms of energy — gravitation, sound, heat, light, 
chemical action, electricity, and magnetism — are 
only different manifestations of one primitive force. 
This is commonly conceived to be a vibratory mo- 
tion of the atoms of matter dancing to and fro in 
empty space, and influencing one another at a dis- 
tance without any medium. 

' ' When tnis theory is examined, however, some 
parts of it prove not only mysterious, but improb- 
able, if not impossible. We can iind no satisfactory 
answer to the question, How can a thing act where 
it is not present?" (Page 194.) 

Perhaps Irving' s question is not the 
real question. Granting, if you please, 
that a thingf cannot act where it is not 
present, the question does not seem to 
be that, but whether the thing can make 
itself present there without a transport- 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 233 

ing medium. Can it go without assist- 
ance, or must it ride on something? 
The "thing" Irving speaks of, is, of 
course, some one of the forms of radiant 
energy, — light, heat, electricity, gravita- 
tion. These are never found separated 
from matter ; therefore it is assumed that, 
as they travel from place to place, they 
must have matter or substance of some 
sort to carry them. But are we war- 
ranted in assuming this ? We are with- 
out means of comparison between an 
absolutely empty space and space filled 
with ether. We do not know whether 
light, heat, electricity and gravitation 
would move more easily in one than the 
other. We have no means of reasoning 
out which condition would be more favor- 
able to the journey. We do not know 
that light-waves constitute light ; they 
may be a symptom of light, — a species 
of collateral phenomena, caused by an 
atmospheric medium which offers some 



234 FINITE AND INFINITE 

resistance. So with other waves denot- 
ing the existence of radiant energy. 
How are we to conceive of waves in 
something that is imponderable, — that 
offers no resistance to the planets and 
suns as they fly through it with such 
marvellous speeds ? Is it not wiser to 
concede a mystery than to make a wild 
guess ? 

But it must not be supposed that this 
ether-theory has been adopted by the 
physicists with anything like unanimity. 
There are always, in every department 
of human life, many who, being busy 
with their own particular specialties, 
adopt such theories of other people as 
they find useful or convenient, caring 
little and inquiring not at all as to 
whether the theory itself has a sound 
basis. These are the people who work 
their senses too much and their intellects 
too little, and gather up that one-half 
of experimental science which Professor 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 235 

Karl Pearson declares to be worthless. 
By a different class of men, the thinkers, 
"ether" is likely to be restored to Its 
place, as a convenient fiction for mathe- 
matical purposes. But that is the other 
side, and deserves a chapter by itself. 



CHAPTER VI 

The other side of the ether question — Spencer 
heaves a metaphysical rock — Fiske makes a 
bull's-eye — The French school of physicists is 
heard in protest — A metaphysical bogie. 

From what has been already shown, it 
will be seen that the ether idea may be 
adopted for the same purpose that the 
letter x is used in algebra — to express an 
unknown quantity. Assuming, as we 
must, that radiant energy has some means 
of going from place to place, for it cer- 
tainly does go, and not knowing what 
that means is, we might as well call it 
ether as any other name so long as we 
do not understand it. But we should be 
more careful, after havingf oiven a name 
to this child of imagination, how far we 
go in ascribing to it properties and quali- 
ties which belong only to real things. 
236 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 237 

No one who candidly and carefully con- 
siders the quotations from scientific works 
set forth in the last chapter can conceive 
it possible that such a theory, viewed in 
the light of a reality, and not as a con- 
venient fiction merely, could pass unques- 
tioned the gauntlet of the thinkers. Nor 
has it. Spencer shied a rock in that di- 
rection more than twenty years ago, and 
Fiske followed with a shot that hit the 
mark fairly, I quote from " Cosmic 
Philosophy," volume i., pages 5, 6. 

" When we contemplate the mode in which one 
particle of matter acts upon the adjacent particles 
by attractive and repulsive forces, we find ourselves 
equally puzzled. As Mr. Spencer well observes, 
' Matter cannot be conceived except as manifesting 
forces of attraction and repulsion. Body is dis- 
tinguished in our consciousness from space, by its 
opposition to our muscular energies ; and this 
opposition we feel under the twofold form of a 
cohesion that hinders our efforts to rend, and a 
resistance that hinders our efforts to compress. 
Without resistance there can be merely empty ex- 



238 FINITE AND INFINITE 

tension. Without cohesion there can be no resist- 
ance. Thus we are obliged to think of all objects 
as made up of parts that attract and repel each 
other, since this is the form of our experiences of 
all objects. Nevertheless, however verbally in- 
telligible may be the proposition that pressure and 
tension everywhere co-exist, yet we cannot truly 
represent to ourselves one ultimate unit of matter 
as drawing another while resisting it.' 

' * Nor is this the last of the difficulties which 
encumber our hypothesis of mutually attracting 
and repelling particles separated by tracts of un- 
occupied space. For this hypothesis requires us 
to conceive one particle acting upon another 
through a space that is utterly empty ; and we can 
in no wise conceive any such action. How shall 
we escape this difficulty ? Shall we assume that 
the intervals between the particles are filled by a 
fluid of excessive tenuity, like the so-called im- 
ponderable ether to which physicists are in the 
habit of appealing ? We shall soon find that the 
problem is only shifted. As soon as we inquire 
into the constitution of this hypothetical inter- 
molecular fluid, we are no better off than before. 
For we have no alternative but to regard this fluid 
as itself an extremely rarefied form of matter : 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 239 

since it does not perceptibly affect the weights of 
bodies, Ave must regard it as possessed of a density 
that is almost infinitesimal, — that is, its constituent 
particles must be separated from each other by 
regions of empty space that are even greater in 
proportion to the size of the particles than are the 
spaces that intervene between the molecules of 
that relatively dense form of matter which we call 
ponderable. With regard to the ether, as before 
with regard to the matter, we have to ask, How 
can its particles act upon each other through space 
that is utterly empty ? How can a thing act 
where it is not ? How can motion be transmitted 
in the absence of any medium of transmission ? 
And to this question no answer ever has been, or 
ever can be, devised. 

' ' Thus, whichever horn of the dilemma we take 
hold of, we are sure to be gored by it. Whether 
we assume on the one hand that matter is abso- 
lutely solid, or on the other hand that it is abso- 
lutely porous, we are alike brought face to face 
with questions which we can neither solve nor 
elude. ' ' 

In the Literary Digest of March 4, 
1905, in the department of Science and 



240 FINITE AND INFINITE 

Invention, there is an editorial article 
with the title, "Is Action at a Distance 
Possible ? " which is good reading for 
people who do not take to chimeras. 
The editor gives an account of the treat- 
ment which the ether theory is now re- 
ceiving at the hands of those physicists 
who protest against it, especially among 
French men of science, and I feel that it 
is so pertinent to our present inquiry 
that it should be quoted here : 

"Zr Action at a distance possible? To the 
negative answer usually given to this question, and 
to the consequent attempts to explain apparent 
cases of action at a distance, we owe some of 
the greatest advances in modern science. That 
the distant bell acts on the listening ear only by 
means of a sound-wave propagated through the 
intervening air, and that the distant source of light 
affects the retina by means of a similar wave mov- 
ing in a suppositious ether, are now familiar results 
of scientific discovery. Yet a numerous school of 
physicists has never taken kindly to the absolute 
denial of action at a distance, and the more so 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 241 

that one of the fundamental facts of physics, 
namely, gravitation, has never been satisfactorily 
explained by the qualities of an intervening me- 
dium. This school has been especially strong among 
French men of science, so we need not be sur- 
prised to find its views upheld in a posthumous 
work of the late M. Charles Renouvier, and men- 
tioned with approval in a review of that work 
in 'Cosmos,' by M. C. de Kirwan. Says this 
writer : 

" ' A thinker to whom some one quoted the 
philosophical maxim that a body can act only 
where it is, replied, " But where is it ? " And this 
is not simply a play on words, for it is impossible 
to designate the place of an action : all we know 
about is the place of the effect. ... It had 
better been said, " a body is where it acts." And 
in fact the force and the action are localized only 
as we consider them scientifically in their effects 
or in their conditions of existence ; in themselves 
we cannot connect them with place, and we can- 
not say that they occupy, fill, or bound spaces. . . . 

"'Action at a distance remains an ultimate 

fact, inexplicable by the principles of shock or the 

pressure of bodies in immediate contact. And 

this fact (the fact of gravitation) is the foundation 

16 



242 FINITE AND INFINITE 

of the most magnificent theoretical structure that 
science has ever erected. ' 

'* The adversaries of action at a distance rely on 
the supposed necessity of contact, direct or inter- 
mediate, between the acting body and the body 
acted on. But this contact really has not exist- 
ence in nature. We must not believe that we see 
two bodies touch, since between two surfaces in 
so-called contact there are innumerable molecules 
whose functions determine, when they touch us, 
the external relations of our organs and of all our 
sensations. Doubtless the distances that separate 
bodies in ' contact ' are infinitely small, but they 
exist, and their extent, no matter how small, does 
not weaken the principle. Thus argues M. Renou- 
vier, and he goes farther than most of his fellow 
philosophers, since apparently he denies altogether 
the necessity of postulating a universal ether, while 
they content themselves with asserting that the ex- 
istence of such an ether is no bar to their conten- 
tion, since it must itself consist of molecules or 
their analogues, which, though hacked very closely, 
must act on each other ' at a distance, ' however 
small. Says his commentator : 

' ' ' Whatever we call the principle by virtue of 
which bodies move in space according to New- 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 243 

ton's law, we shall not avoid the difficulty. Or 
rather we shall recognize implicitly — uncon- 
sciously, if you will — the reality of action at a 
distance, while disguising it under different names. 

" ' Whether or not we admit the existence of an 
ethereal medium, the fact of the law formulated by 
Newton exists none the less. To oppose to this 
law an a priori objection of metaphysical order, 
is simply to increase the difficulty, without great 
profit. And to rely on Newton's authority to 
convict it of absurdity is to forget the circum- 
stances and the difficulties with which the great 
astronomer had to deal. May not this discourteous 
objection be turned in another direction and ap- 
plied to the hypothesis of an ether that is as rigid 
as the diamond or even more so, and yet impalpa- 
ble, penetrating, and penetrable, to which we are 
obliged to resort to avoid the pretended absurdity 
of action at a distance ? 

* ' ' There are doubtless in the posthumous book 
of M. Renouvier propositions and theses quite sub- 
ject to question ; there may be even some that are 
to be regretted. But we find there also a good 
number of precious truths, and if the book aids in 
dissipating the idea that it is impossible for bodies 
to act and react at a distance, it will have ren- 



244 FINITE AND INFINITE 

dered, in our opinion, a great service to science 
and even to metaphysics.' " 



The trouble with the etherists is that 
they were not satisfied with a mathe- 
matical fiction ; they wanted a reality. 
They first suggested a metaphysical ob- 
jection, the negation of which is easily 
conceivable, and, in order to fi"ighten 
away this metaphysical bogie, they in- 
vented another which assuredly is in- 
conceivable. When scientists make a 
wrong start like this, and then go from 
bad to worse, as they must, it is a health- 
ful sign to see a halt called, as is now 
the case in regard to this ether theory. 

The reader will not have failed to 
notice the celerity with which some of 
the writers quoted in the preceding chap- 
ter fall into the use of such expressions 
as "the mind carinot conceive of one body 
acting upon another without some con- 
necting medium," "It is evident that a 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 245 

thing cannot act where it is not present." 
But John Fiske can hardly be suspected 
of borrowing phrases because they may 
be found in school-books, or of passing 
over, without due consideration, any sort 
of proposition in science or philosophy, 
and, therefore, I desire to pay some 
attention to the similar remark made by 
him in the quotation made at the begin- 
ning of this chapter. Fiske did not 
believe in the actual existence of matter 
("Idea of God," page 151). Hence he 
was ready to admit that "we can in no 
wise conceive of action at a distance." 
He was ready to concede that there might 
be some "external reality" that causes, 
in consciousness, the effects we call 
matter, because "things may exist in 
heaven and on earth which are neither 
dreamt of in our philosophy nor conceiv- 
able by our intelligence." . . . "Thought 
is not the measure of things," but Fiske 
held that action of matter upon matter, 



246 FINITE AND INFINITE 

of mind upon matter, or matter upon 
mind, were all equally "unthinkable." 
(" Cosmic Philosophy," volume i., pages 
155, 158 ; volume ii., page 445.) 

It is "unthinkable" to me how Fiske, 
or any one, can believe unthinkable to 
men that which they actually see and 
feel. We see the light of the sun, and 
we feel its heat. Instead of its being 
impossible for us to think that these 
phenomena are real and come to us from a 
real sun, acting upon us from a great dis- 
tance, the fact is that it is impossible for 
us to think otherwise, and the best proof 
of this is that everybody does think it, 
without any teaching, and without any 
appreciable effort to reason it out. Every- 
thing we see, and everything we think 
we see, is thinkable. We may be mis- 
taken. Men were mistaken when they 
thought the sun revolved daily around the 
earth, but it was not unthinkable. Prob- 
ably what Fiske really thought was that 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 247 

the things he spoke of as unthinkable 
were undemonstrable, metaphysically, 
and that, to a mind prepared like his 
own, they were unthinkable. To the 
common run of people " action at a dis- 
tance," being something that they see 
and feel, not only is thinkable, but they 
are forced to think it. Nor has it been 
proved that they are mistaken. Nor 
will any conservative scientist assert 
positively that they are. But suppose 
they are mistaken, is it not clear that 
action at a distance is, nevertheless, 
thinkable ? That mind can act upon 
matter, Fiske declares unthinkable ; and 
yet there are plenty of men who think it, 
because they believe they have seen it, — 
not ignorant, or thoughtless, or inexperi- 
enced men, but men of profound scien- 
tific learning, and possessing minds 
peculiarly fitted, by long training, to judge 
the scientific value of appearances. From 
all quarters of the civilized world, — from 



248 FINITE AND INFINITE 

the continent of Europe, from England 
and America, the testimony of such men 
has come to the Society for Psychical 
Research, attesting their inability to be- 
lieve otherwise than that mind can and 
does act upon matter. Are they mis- 
taken ? That is not the question ; the 
question is whether the suggestion is 
thinkable or not. Things unthinkable, 
without experience of them, are being 
constantly forced upon us by enlarged 
experience. 



CHAPTER VII 

Is the universe finite ? — Inferences from the phe- 
nomenon of star "magnitude" — Newcomb's 
researches in this field — Young's statement of 
the facts — The absolute persistence of light ; 
light from nebulae and comets' tails — The dis- 
covery of light-pressure — Going into the realm 
of the inconceivable to find the problematical 
effect of a dubious cause — Wallace speaks to 
the point — Carl Snyder adds a new suggestion 
— Wallace sums up, and, in fancy, paints a blue 
sky upon a ' ' dark background. ' * 

The varying light of the stars has been 
classified under the somewhat misleading 
term "magnitude," a legacy from the 
Alexandrian astronomers, who thought 
that greater brilliancy meant greater size. 
The classification of stars by the ancients, 
and until quite modern times, was imper- 
fect, especially as regards the brightest 
stars, — those so conspicuously bright 

249 



250 FINITE AND INFINITE 

that when viewed with the naked eye we 
at once put them in a class by them- 
selves. There are twenty of these alto- 
gether. But when accurate modern 
methods were applied to the measure- 
ment of their light it was found, for in- 
stance, that the first magnitude star 
Sirius gives thirteen times as much light 
as Regulus, another star of the same 
class. And between these two there 
are many and great differences of light 
magnitude. At the present time this 
group of twenty stars is divided into 
three classes, — Sirius, and a star about 
half as bright, Canopus, in a class by 
themselves ; the seven next most promi- 
nent in brightness in another class, and 
the next eleven less briofht in another 
class, called first magnitude. Besides 
these three classes of bright stars, all of 
which are generally treated in text-books 
and popular expositions of astronomy 
under the old designation of first mag- 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 251 

nitude, the stars of fainter brilliancy 
have been classified, down as far as 
the twenty-first magnitude. With fairly 
good eyes, stars as faint as sixth magni- 
tude can be seen upon a clear night 
with no moon shining. The numbers of 
these are, according to Flammarion : 



First magnitude 


20 


Fourth magnitude 


530 


Second " 


59 


Fifth 


1600 


Third " 


182 


Sixth " 


4800 



For fainter stars than these, down to 
the eighteenth magnitude, the telescope 
is needed. Those still fainter may be 
photographed, but the telescope does 
not reveal them, — at least no telescope 
has yet been made that will do it. 

Now, in regard to these different classes 
of stars, Professor Newcomb has shown 
that down to the tenth magnitude they 
exhibit a steady ratio of increasing vol- 
ume of light, caused, of course, by such 
a rapid increase in numbers as to over- 



252 FINITE AND INFINITE 

come and distance the other factor, — of 
growing faintness. The total Hght re- 
ceived from all the first magnitude stars 
being designated, for convenience, by 
the numeral i. The total from those of 
third magnitude is 2 ; from fifth magni- 
tude stars, 4 ; seventh magnitude, 8 ; 
and ninth magnitude, 16. So also the 
total received from the intermediate mag- 
nitudes up to tenth would be represented 
as, second magnitude 1.4; fourth, 2.8; 
sixth, 5.7; eighth, 11.3; tenth, 22.6. 
From this ratio it is a simple problem 
in arithmetic to estimate what the total 
would be if the increase of light contin- 
ued. The lowest calculation of the total 
light received from all the stars from 
magnitude one down to nine and a half 
is one-eightieth of full moonlight, except 
the estimate of Professor Newcomb, one- 
sixtieth of full moonlight for all stars 
to magnitude eighteen. Some have 
placed the total starlight as high as one- 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 253 

thirtieth of full moonlight. In Young's 
"General Astronomy," page 515, the 
point is stated as follows : 

" How much to add for the still smaller magni- 
tudes is very uncertain. Beyond the tenth mag- 
nitude the number of small stars does not increase 
proportionately fast, so that if we could carry on 
the account of stars to the twentieth magnitude, 
it is practically certain that we should not find the 
total light of the aggregate stars of each succeed- 
ing magnitude increasing at any such rate as from 
the seventh to the tenth. Perhaps it would be a 
not unreasonable estimate to put the total starlight 
of the northern hemisphere as equivalent to about 
fifteen hundred first-magnitude stars, or that of the 
whole sphere at three thousand. This would make 
the total starlight on a clear night about one- 
sixtieth of the light of the full moon, and about 
one-thirty-seven-millionth that of the sun. The 
light from the stars which are visible to the naked 
eye would not be as much as one-twenty-fifth of 
the whole. ' ' 

The statement that only one-twenty- 
fifth of the whole starlight comes from 



2 54 FINITE AND INFINITE 

stars that can be seen with the naked 
eye is accounted for by the fact that, 
although stars may be so faint that we 
cannot see them, their light comes to us. 
This is demonstrated beyond dispute by 
the fact that their light does come into 
the telescope and camera, which it could 
not do if it did not reach the earth. Any 
one having good eyes can demonstrate 
the same thing to himself by seeing stars 
too faint to be seen by some other per- 
son. The starlight reaches both, but 
only one can see it. 

The very rapid increase of starlight 
coming to us as the stars grow fainter, 
— twice as much from those of third 
magnitude as from first ; twice as much 
from fifth as from third ; twice as much 
from seventh as from fifth ; twice as 
much from ninth as from seventh, — 
would certainly lead us to wonder why 
the whole sky is not ablaze with light. 
For although we cannot see a single 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 255 

star fainter than seventh magnitude, yet 
where many are grouped in the Hne of 
vision, so that they reinforce each other, 
as in the Milky Way, we can then see 
their hght, although we cannot see them 
separately. The Milky Way, once thought 
to be a nebulous mass, is composed 
almost wholly of stars too faint to be seen 
separately. Yet, if it were indeed com- 
posed of nebulae, the fact of its light 
coming to us would be much more won- 
derful ; for the nebulse of the heavens 
are nothing more than patches of flam- 
ing gas or luminous star dust, and 
they consist of individual forms, of some 
sort, much smaller than the smallest 
star. Many nebulous particles whose 
infinitesimal lights come to earth, and 
which in the aggregate we are able to 
see, are doubtless as small as the impal- 
pable dust following a comet, and which 
causes the phenomenon known as a 
comet's tail. These are so very small 



256 FINITE AND INFINITE 

that, when the comet approaches the sun, 
the repelling force of the sun's heat 
overcomes the sun's attraction for them, 
and they are driven away to that side of 
the comet farthest from the sun, thus 
causing the phenomenon that puzzled 
astronomers until within the last year or 
two, — the strange fact that a comet's tail 
is behind the comet when approaching 
the sun and in front of the comet when 
going away. 

In the Smithsonian Report, for 1903, 
pages 1 15-138, also in the Astrophysical 
yournal, volume xvii.. No. 5, June, 1903, 
there is an exceedingly interesting arti- 
cle entitled, "The Pressure due to Radi- 
ation," written by E. F. Nichols and G. 
F. Hull, two American scientists, and 
containing a history of the progress of 
investigation of this question from the 
first half of the eighteenth century to the 
present time ; with full description of a 
series of experiments conducted by the 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 257 

writers. The article is illustrated by 
drawings and diagrams, and its style and 
language are such as to make it easily 
comprehensible to ordinary readers. It 
shows that in this field of investigation 
there is no longer any doubt that light 
exerts a pressure upon very fine parti- 
cles of dust, so as to propel them for- 
ward in the direction of propagation of 
the light rays, and that there is an, as 
yet, undetermined ratio of gain of this 
force over the energy of attraction, indi- 
cating that if the attraction and light- 
pressure were radiated from the same 
body, e.g., the sun, there will be found 
a certain distance where the light-press- 
ure will overcome the energy of attrac- 
tion for such dust particles. This comes 
from the fact that mass is what counts 
in attraction, while surface is what counts 
in radiant pressure, and dust may be so 
extremely fine that the proportion of 
surface to mass will leave a balance in 
17 



258 FINITE AND INFINITE 

favor of the pressure over and above 
the attraction when the particles ap- 
proach near the sun. Messrs. Nichols 
and Hull, as one of their experiments, 
devised a "laboratory comet's tail," the 
main factors of which were calcined puff- 
ball dust mixed with fine sand and 
placed in the upper half of a glass tube, 
the tube being reduced to a "neck" at 
its centre, with an exceedingly small 
aperture, so that when stood upright, 
the dust and sand would not fall through 
into the lower half unless the tube was 
stroked or tapped lightly. As perfect a 
vacuum as possible was then made of 
the tube, leaving in it only the sand and 
puff-ball dust, and the tube was properly 
sealed, and stood upright, with the half 
containing the sand and dust uppermost. 
A beam of light of "approximately known 
intensity was then directed horizontally 
on the lower half of the tube just below 
the neck. By tapping the tube a fine 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 259 

stream of sand and puff-ball spores de- 
scended. The sand particles fell through 
the beam, but the spores were driven 
from the stream sidewise in passing the 
beam" of light. 

The application of this to the point 
under discussion will be evident. These 
excessively minute particles composing 
a comet's tail shine by reflected light, — 
the sun's light ; it comes to each one of 
them and is reflected from each one of 
them, over more than a hundred million 
miles of space, to our earth. If one of 
them were placed within an inch of our 
eyes we would fail to see it. Yet the 
light of the sun shining upon it is re- 
flected over that vast region of space to 
us, and when millions of billions of these 
separately invisible lights reinforce each 
other, as in the comet's tail, we can see 
the aggregate of them. 

Such is the wonderful persistence and 
indestructibility of light ! Let the reader 



26o FINITE AND INFINITE 

get this idea well into his mind, and he 
will think that Miss Gierke has spoken 
with moderation when she characterizes 
the suggestion that starlight may be 
wholly lost in transmission through space, 
on account of distance, as "the prob- 
lematical effect of a more than dubious 
cause." Think of the microscopic, nebu- 
lar dust-particles, each sending its in- 
finitesimal ray of light to our earth over 
spaces as wide as those between us and 
the most distant stars observable by a 
four-inch telescope, and then think of a 
shining sun whose light cannot reach 
us ! Perhaps we would not quite enter 
the realm of the impossible in such a 
flight of fancy, but we should most as- 
suredly have penetrated far enough into 
infinite space to leave abundant room on 
the hither side for that sky which would 
be in Newcomb's words "A blaze of 
light as bright as the sun." 

The sky is not ablaze with light. It 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 261 

is blue. Yet we have seen that down to 
the tenth mag^nitude the numbers of the 
stars increase so rapidly, from magnitude 
to magnitude, that each successive mag- 
nitude sends about fifty per cent, more 
light to us than its predecessor. Accu- 
mulating light thus rapidly, we should 
certainly expect quite a different looking 
sky. But the fact is that the light from 
stars fainter than tenth magnitude does 
not increase. It begins to fall off, and 
becomes less and less until we reach 
stars of the twenty-first magnitude ; and 
although diminutive nebulous particles, 
apparently distant as any tenth magni- 
tude star, send their lights to us, we get 
none from those giant suns which should 
be around and beyond them, and which 
should be there in numbers sufficient to 
make the whole sky brighter than any 
portion of the Milky Way if the star sys- 
tem were infinite in extent. 

The following quotation from " Man's 



262 FINITE AND INFINITE 

Place in the Universe," page 152, will 
be in point here : 

"Now it has been calculated as the result of 
careful observations, that the total light given by 
stars down to nine and a half magnitude is one- 
eightieth of full moonlight, though some make it 
much more. But if we continue the table of light- 
ratios from this low starting-point down to magni- 
tude seventeen and a half, we shall find, if the 
numbers of the stars go on increasing at the same 
rate as before, that the light of all combined should 
be at least seven times as great as moonlight ; where- 
as the photometric measurements make it actually 
about one-twentieth. And as the calculation from 
light-ratios only includes stars just visible in the 
largest telescopes, and does not include all those 
proved to exist by photography, we have in this 
case a demonstration that the numbers of the stars 
below the tenth and down to the seventeenth mag- 
nitude diminish rapidly. ' ' 

Carl Snyder, in his book, " New Con- 
ceptions in Science," published in 1904, 
says, page 74 : 

* ' We are aware of the existence of the stars only 
through their ability to affect the retina or the 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 263 

photographic plate. The light they send us is 
mainly white, that is to say, compound. It is a 
mixture of all the colors of the rainbow, and each 
of these colors represents a different wave-length. 
In passing through ordinary substances, like glass 
or water, the different colors are differently im- 
peded or absorbed. If the light from the pole- 
star passed through an absorbing medium on its 
way to the earth, it is likely that the absorption 
would be, in some degree, selective. One color 
would be more absorbed than another. The light 
from the stars would not be white ; it would 
be tinted. There are of course red stars, like 
Orion, yellow stars, like Arcturus ; but there are 
other stars indefinitely more distant whose light is 
pure white. The inference, then, is that light is 
not absorbed or diminished as it traverses space. 

' ' If light is not absorbed, and the number of 
stars were infinite, then the sky would be ablaze 
night and day, and we could distinguish the sun 
only as a rather yellowish disk. The sky is not so 
lighted ; the inference, then, is that the stars are 
countable." 

Snyder thus emphasizes the fact that 
all the light of the stars comes to us. 



264 FINITE AND INFINITE 

Not one of its component color waves 
is stopped by intervening causes. Tiiis 
fact was also put forward as proof of my 
theory in the article sent to Popular As- 
tronomy in 1894, where I said : 

"The fact that the spectrum of a star's light dis- 
closes all the rays, proves that this intensely blue 
thing that we call sky is beyond the stars." 

The second suggestion, — that there 
may be a sufficient quantity of opaque 
matter, dark suns, and meteoric stones 
and dust, between us and stars of less 
than tenth magnitude, to shut out the 
light of the most distant stars, — has at 
least the merit of being based upon a 
fact which is known to exist to some ex- 
tent. Mr. Wallace devotes a chapter of 
his book to the question, " Are the Stars 
Infinite in Number ? " It appears to be 
like all the rest of the book, a compila- 
tion of all the facts observed, and opin- 
ions expressed, up to the date when he 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 265 

finished writing it, September, 1903, that 
would throw light upon the subject. I 
can do no better than to sfive the reader 
his summing up of the argument, which 
is as follows, pages 1 5 3 to 155: 

" We must remember that the minuter telescopic 
stars preponderate enormously in and near the 
Milky Way. At a distance from it they diminish 
rapidly, till near its poles they are almost entirely 
absent. This is shown by the fact . . . that Pro- 
fessor Celoria, Milan, with a telescope of less than 
three inches aperture" (Professor Comstock says 
four inches aperture) "counted as many stars in 
that region as did Herschel with his eighteen-inch 
reflector. But if the stellar universe extends with- 
out limit, we can hardly suppose it to do so in one 
plane only ; hence the absence of the minuter stars 
and of diffused milky light over the larger part of 
the heavens is now held to prove that the myriads 
of very minute stars in the Milky Way really 
belong to it, and not to the depths of space far 
beyond. 

' ' It seems to me that here we have a fairly di- 
rect proof that the stars of our universe are really 
limited in number. 



266 FINITE AND INFINITE 

* * There are thus four distinct lines of argument, 
all pointing with more or less force to the conclu- 
sion that the stellar universe we see around us, so 
far from being infinite, is strictly limited in extent 
and of a definite form and constitution. They 
may be briefly summarized as follows : 

" (i) Professor Newcomb shows that, if the 
stars were infinite in number, and if those we see 
were approximately a fair sample of the whole, 
and further, if there were not sufficient dark bodies 
to shut out almost the whole of their light, then 
we should receive from them an amount of light 
theoretically greater than that of sunlight. I 
have shown at some length that neither of these 
causes of loss of light will account for the enor- 
mous disproportion between the theoretical and the 
actual light received from the stars ; and therefore 
Professor Newcomb' s argument must be held to be 
a valid one against the infinite extent of our uni- 
verse. Of course, this does not imply that there 
may not be any number of other universes in 
space, but as we know absolutely nothing of them — 
even whether they are material or non-material — 
all speculation as to their existence is worse than 
useless. 

" (2) The next argument depends on the fact 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 267 

that all over the heavens, even in the Milky 
Way itself, there are areas of considerable extent, 
besides rifts, lanes, and circular patches, where 
stars are either quite absent or very faint and few 
in number. In many of these areas the largest 
telescopes show no more stars than those of 
moderate size, while the few stars seen are pro- 
jected on an intensely dark background. Sir 
William Herschel, Humboldt, Sir John Herschel, 
R. A. Proctor, and many living astronomers, hold 
that, in these dark areas, rifts, and patches, we see 
completely through our stellar universe into the 
starless depth of space beyond. 

" (3) Then we have the remarkable fact that 
the steady increase in the number of stars down to 
the ninth or tenth magnitudes following one con- 
stant ratio, either gradually or suddenly changes, 
so that the total number from the tenth down to 
the seventeenth magnitude is only about one -tenth 
of what it would have been had the same ratio of 
increase continued. The conclusion to be drawn 
from this fact clearly is, that these faint stars are 
becoming more and more thinly scattered in space, 
while the dark background on which they are 
usually seen shows that, except in the region of 



2 68 FINITE AND INFINITE 

the Milky Way, there are not multitudes of still 
smaller invisible stars beyond them. 

" (4) The last indication of a limited stellar 
universe — the estimate of numbers by the light- 
ratio of each successive magnitude — powerfully 
supports the three preceding arguments. 

' * The four distinct classes of evidence now 
adduced must be held to constitute, as nearly as 
the circumstances will permit, satisfactory proof 
that the stellar universe, of which our solar system 
forms a part, has definite limits ; and that a full 
knowledge of its form, structure, and extent is not 
beyond the possibility of attainment by the 
astronomers of the future. ' ' 

"A dark background " to the stars is 
what Mr. Wallace calls the night sky. I 
have seen the sky look more evenly and 
deeply blue on a clear night than ever in 
the daytime. But, whatever its hue, if 
it be a background to the stars it is be- 
yond them. So far as any one can see, 
it is the same sky day and night, — the 
same thing, whatever that thing be ; and 
if it is black or dark at night, I hardly 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 269 

think Mr. Wallace has given us enough 
dust to change it to sky-blue in the day- 
time. Black is not one of the prismatic 
colors, and so it is not called a color ; but 
call it what you will, every painter knows 
that it is the hardest of all things to cover 
with a color. 



CHAPTER VIII 

A finite universe and an infinite mass of matter — 
Opinions of Newcomb, Irving, and Comstock — 
No disagreement as to the infinite spacial extent 
of matter — That which is created is necessarily 
of finite spacial extent — That which is of in- 
finite spacial extent is, of necessity, self-existent. 

No more than two possibilities can 
exist as to the quantity of matter in 
space. Either it is an infinite or a finite 
quantity ; that is to say, it either pervades 
infinite space, or it exists only within 
some finite area or some number of 
finite areas therein. 

A universe made up of a finite quan- 
tity of matter would, of necessity, be 
finite. But, although scientists have 
written more or less upon this subject, I 
have not found any of them expressing 
an opinion that the quantity of matter is 

finite. 
270 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 271 

Mr. Young says/' General Astronomy," 
page 563 : 

" Nor is there now any reason to suppose that 
our own stellar system is separated from other 
stellar systems by any vast abyss of practically 
empty space, relatively proportioned to that which 
separates our planetary system from the possible 
planetary systems of other suns. ' ' 

Haeckel says : 

"The extent of the universe is infinite and 
unbounded ; it is empty in no part, but everywhere 
filled with substance. ' ' 

Irving says in " How to Know the 
Starry Heavens," page 191 : 

" We are compelled, by reasoning on observed 
phenomena, to believe that, in one or other of its 
two forms, this indestructible substance, or matter, 
fills all the infinity of space, without any void 
whatsoever. ' ' 

The "two forms" to which Irving re- 
fers are, first, the "ponderable" form, — 



2 72 FINITE AND INFINITE 

the atoms, elements, compounds, gases, 
liquids, and solids, all of which have 
the corpuscle as their basis; second, 
"ethereal." Of the latter Irving says: 
"It is commonly known as ether. It 
does not consist of a variety of atoms, 
like the ponderable matter just men- 
tioned. It is practically imponderable 
and is absolutely imperceptible to the 
senses. We have, therefore, only indi- 
rect proofs of its existence." 

Professor Comstock says, "Text-Book 
of Astronomy," page 355 : 

* * Each additional step into the depths of space 
brings us into a region of which less is known, and 
what lies beyond the Milky Way is largely a matter 
of conjecture. We shrink from thinking it an in- 
finite void, endless emptiness, and our intellectual 
sympathies go out to Lambert's speculation of a 
universe filled with stellar systems, of which ours, 
bounded by the galaxy, is only one. There is, 
indeed, little direct evidence that other such sys- 
tems exist ; but the Andromeda nebula is not 
altogether unlike a galaxy with a central cloud of 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 273 

stars, and in the southern hemisphere, invisible in 
our latitudes, are two remarkable stellar bodies 
like the Milky Way in appearance, but cut off 
from all apparent connection with it, much as we 
might expect to find independent stellar systems, 
if such there be." 

So with all whom I have found saying 
anything upon the subject ; no one con- 
ceives of our own stellar system as com- 
prising all matter in existence. The con- 
ception that matter fills the infinity of 
space does not of itself help or hinder 
the argument that what we see about us 
is a finite system. It is, however, the 
only hypothesis that appeals to our un- 
derstanding, and so it should be accepted 
as one of the factors with which that 
argument must reckon. And, moreover, 
it necessarily leaves an infinite quantity 
of matter unaccounted for outside of our 
star system, which may be, in whole or 
in part, a primal form of matter, gas, 

"star dust," or whatever you choose to 
18 



2 74 FINITE AND INFINITE 

name it, untouched by the hand of Provi- 
dence, or Nature, or "The Unknowable," 
or "Evolution," or any force or intelli- 
gence of any kind. And this, or some 
portion of it, may surround us. So that 
at least we are not without material for 
our blue sky in that part of space, if 
matter is not infinitely formed into suns 
and worlds. In subsequent chapters it 
will be shown that the law of gravitation 
operating during an eternal past upon a 
finite quantity of matter would, if such 
finite mass of matter were the only 
matter in all space, inevitably have 
caused congestion of such finite mass 
into one solid body, having no stress of 
attraction from the outside to prevent 
such concentration. 

But the conception of matter as filling 
infinite space does not bring to my mind 
any such result as that all this matter 
must be now condensed into suns and 
worlds. It suggests the contrary of that. 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 275 

For, if we concede that matter fills infinite 
space, we must not conceive the pos- 
sibility of a beginning to evolution in any 
part of it, unless we are willing to con- 
cede that the results of that beginning 
must always remain finite in quantity. 
For it is one of the intuitions of the 
human mind that any movement begin- 
ning in any part of infinite space, and 
progressing from that beginning in any 
direction, or in every direction, must of 
necessity eternally remain a finite quan- 
tity, inasmuch as it can never reach the 
limit of that which has no limit. I say, 
therefore, without hesitation, and without 
expecting any one to dissent, that every 
system of cosmogony thus far imagined, 
whether it be that of Laplace, or that of 
Proctor, or anybody else, logically and 
inevitably leads us to a finite universe 
for that system. There is no possible 
escape from this conclusion. Human 
reason leads to it, and forbids any other. 



2 76 FINITE AND INFINITE 

And so, whatever view we take as to the 
spacial extent of matter, we are every- 
where met with the certainty that in its 
finite forms it must in the aggregate 
comprise a measurable quantity. 

It may be that there are other uni- 
verses in other portions of infinite space. 
It may be that there are millions of 
them. But it is certain that each one 
now existing began at some time, and so 
it can never attain infinity in any direc- 
tion. Infinity may be, as elsewhere 
stated, an infinite number of finite quan- 
tities, — for example, an infinite mass of 
matter pervading space would be com- 
posed of an infinite number of finite 
corpuscles, or atoms. That is true. But 
the moment this truth is conceded, we 
intuitively recognize the further truth 
that these corpuscles or atoms must have 
had an eternal existence, for once begin 
to create them, and the filling of infinite 
space with them is a task which can only 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 277 

be done in that "fool's paradise," the 
realm of the impossible. It cannot be 
done where such things as truth or 
reality exist 

The outer boundaries of our stellar 
system are doubtless quite irregular. 
They extend much farther into the 
surrounding envelope of gas, or other 
primal matter, in the direction of the 
Milky Way belt, which so completely en- 
circles us, than they do in any other 
direction. Even the Milky Way seems 
to extend much farther into space in 
some places than in others. There may 
be as many dark suns as bright ones 
within the bounds of our star system, 
and there may be as many clouds of 
meteoric dust there as there are clouds 
of shining nebulae ; but whatever is there, 
it does not exist in sufficient quantity to 
obscure from view or visibly affect that 
all-pervading, constant, persistent, blue 
color, which comes from something that 



2 78 FINITE AND INFINITE 

must lie still farther beyond, inasmuch as 
it does not prevent us from seeing sun, 
moon, planets, comets, stars, and nebulae. 
The sky is, to all appearance, beyond 
the stars ; and that this appearance 
seems to be in accord with observed facts, 
and therefore indicates a reality, has, I 
trust, been shown in the preceding chap- 
ters, as well as anything can be shown, 
appertaining to that far away region, 
by any one so meagrely fitted in 
every way for the task as the writer is. 
It seems, however, very probable that 
if the appliances to be found in 
astronomical observatories, and the in- 
vestigations of those patient students 
who labor there, could be turned 
in this direction, much li^ht could be 
thrown upon a question which "the 
scientific imagination" may strongly sug- 
gest, and support by "circumstantial 
evidence," but which requires expert 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 279 

knowledee and training; to handle it in 
the right way. 

Nevertheless, as will be more fully 
stated in the concluding chapter, the 
purpose of my argument, in this con- 
nection, has not been to prove what the 
sky is or where it is. The evidences 
which seem to locate it beyond the stars 
are merely cumulative to those which 
show that creation is of finite extent, — 
that the universe is finite, — and, therefore, 
that Idealistic Pantheism, resting, as it 
does, upon the assumption that creation 
is of infinite extent, and, consequently, 
that God is of infinite spacial bulk, and 
so, devoid of personality, is opposed to 
science, as it was shown in Part I to be 
opposed to philosophy. 



CHAPTER IX 

Shape of the star system; opinions of Wallace, 
Young, Newcomb, Comstock, and others — The 
experiment made by Herschel and Celoria — 
The camera has reached the farthest boundary 
of the star system — Our sun's central location 
among the stars, indicating that stellar evolution 
began in our neighborhood — Gravitation as a 
factor in the evolution of the star system — His- 
tory of the idea that bodies of matter attract 
each other — Newton's predecessors in this field 
of inquiry ; they suggested gravitation ; Newton 
proved it. 

The star system has an appearance 
of being shaped, in general outHne, 
something Hke a round, flat disk, or, per- 
haps, Hke a pretty thick double-convex 
lens, and extends much farther in the 
direction of the galaxy (Milky Way) than 
in the two directions at right angles to 

the plane of the Milky Way. It, of 
280 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 281 

course, takes in the Milky Way, and the 
sun is quite close to the centre of the 
system, Mr. Wallace has collected all 
the data on this point (" Man's Place in 
the Universe," chapter viii.), citing many 
noted astronomers, and setting forth the 
evidences upon which their opinions are 
based. Summing up, on page 168, he 
says : 

" It will, I think, now be clear to my readers 
that .... four main astronomical propositions 
.... have been shown to be supported by so 
many converging lines of evidence that it is no 
longer possible to deny that they are, at least pro- 
visionally, fairly well established. These facts are, 
(i) that the stellar universe is not of infinite ex- 
tent ; (2) that our sun is situated near to the cen- 
tral plane of the Milky Way; (3) that it is also 
situated near to the centre of that plane ; (4) 
that we are surrounded by a group or cluster of 
stars of unknown extent, which occupy a place 
not far removed from the centre of the galactic 
plane, and, .therefore, near to the centre of our 
universe of stars. 



282 FINITE AND INFINITE 

" Not only are these four propositions each sup- 
ported by converging lines of evidence, including 
some which I believe have not before been ad- 
duced in their support, but a number of astrono- 
mers, admittedly of the first rank, have arrived at 
the same conclusions as to the bearing of the evi- 
dence, and have expressed their convictions in the 
clearest manner, as quoted by me. It is their con- 
clusions which I appeal to and adopt. ' ' 

The opinions of the American astron- 
omers, Young and Newcomb, to the 
same effect, will be cited hereafter ; and 
the same conclusion seems to be sup- 
ported by the following statement of 
Professor Comstock (" Text-Book of As- 
tronomy," page 354), although Com- 
stock, as elsewhere shown, seems to 
favor the idea that the stars are infinite 
in number, and that our own star system 
is only one of many that fill infinite space : 

"The dimensions of this stellar system are 
wholly unknown, but there can be no doubt that 
it extends farther in the plane of the Milky Way 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 283 

than at right angles to that plane, for stars of the 
fifteenth and sixteenth magnitudes are common in 
the galaxy, and testify by their feeble light to 
their great distance from the earth, while near the 
poles of the Milky Way there seem to be few stars 
fainter than the twelfth magnitude. Herschel, 
with his telescope of eighteen inches aperture, 
could count in the Milky Way more than a dozen 
times as many stars per square degree as could 
Celoria with a telescope of four inches aperture ; 
but around the poles of the galaxy the two tele- 
scopes showed practically the same number of stars, 
indicating that here even the smaller telescope 
reached to the limits of the stellar system. Very 
recently, indeed, the telescope .... seems to 
have reached the farthest limit of the Milky Way, 
for on a photographic plate of one of its richest 
regions Roberts finds it completely resolved into 
stars which stand out upon a black background 
with no trace of nebulous light between them. ' ' 

If we are located near the centre of 
the star system, it seems a reasonable 
inference that we belong to the oldest 
portion of it. And this is very strongly 
indicated by the fact that there is a clus- 



284 FINITE AND INFINITE 

ter of stars to which our sun belongs, 
which is roughly spherical in shape and 
occupies a central position in the plane 
of the Milky Way. This was proved by 
both Kapteyn and Newcomb, from ob- 
servation of the stars near enough to us 
to show "proper motion." Newcomb 
says, as the result of his observation, 
"If we should blot out from the sky all 
the stars having no proper motion large 
enough to be detected, we should find 
remaining stars of all magnitudes ; but 
they would be scattered almost uniformly 
over the sky." 

That these proper-motion stars are 
"scattered almost uniformly over the 
sky" indicates clearly that they occupy a 
region of space almost spherical, whose 
periphery is almost equi-distant from us 
in all directions, — in other words, that 
we are near the centre of this cluster of 
proper-motion stars. Another signifi- 
cant fact is that among the stars of this 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 285 

cluster, which Wallace calls "the solar 
cluster," those having the largest proper 
motion, indicating greater proximity to 
us, exhibit similar evidences of old age 
as our sun, as shown by their color and 
spectra, while those stars whose spectra 
show them to be younger are farther 
away from us. Commenting on this, 
Wallace says : "It is a very suggestive 
fact that most of the stars belonging to 
this cluster have spectra of the solar 
type, which indicates that they are of the 
same general chemical constitution as 
our sun, and are also at about the same 
stage of evolution." 

If Mr. Wallace had deduced, from 
these facts, a theory that this region of 
stars, — the solar cluster, is, in all proba- 
bility, the only portion of our star sys- 
tem where evolutionary conditions have 
existed for a sufficient time to produce 
inhabitants possessing a high order of 
intellect, probably his brother scientists 



286 FINITE AND INFINITE 

would have had little reason to find fault, 
assuming what is presumably true, — 
that the conditions of evolution are the 
same everywhere. 

Newcomb says in his book, "The 
Stars" : "So far as we can judge from 
the enumeration of the stars in all direc- 
tions, and from the aspect of the Milky 
Way, our system is near the centre of 
the stellar universe." 

It is not at all likely, nor, so far as I 
know, has it been suggested by any one, 
that our stellar universe is the result of 
a cosmic process beginning upon the out- 
side and progressing inward. Nor is 
there any belief among astronomers that 
the entire star system is a unit, such as 
it would be if all built up as the result 
of one original impulse pervading the 
whole of the space it occupies. The mo- 
tions observed within it are too different 
and too far from having apparent rela- 
tion to each other to suggest anything 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 287 

of that sort. The indications are to the 
contrary, and that the star system is 
not the result of a single primal evolu- 
tionary effort, but of millions of single 
births of stars and star systems, succeed- 
ing each other. It would be difficult to 
admit the possibility of a system, like our 
own for instance, having once obtained a 
start toward its present condition without 
giving to the latent energies residing in 
surrounding matter theretofore dormant, 
an advantage of position favorable to the 
conversion of those energies into active 
forces that would of necessity result in 
the evolution of other suns and systems. 
A region of empty space would be 
cleared between the embryo sun and the 
surrounding envelope of matter. A re- 
gion of empty space ! Can empty space 
be the cause of anything? Speaking 
with strict accuracy. No ; yet the exist- 
ence of that region of empty space means 
that masses of matter have been so far 



288 FINITE AND INFINITE 

removed from each other that the law 
of gravitation is now at liberty to do 
things that it has never been able to do 
before. We have now the Finite in the 
material kingdom, whereas before we 
had only the Infinite ; and this void is the 
boundary between them. To under- 
stand the wonderful potentialities of this 
changed condition, we must inquire con- 
cerning the law of gravitation. What 
can it do now that it could not do be- 
fore ? How can it operate within a finite 
mass in ways that are closed to it in 
an infinite mass ? We shall, when we 
understand that law, be convinced that it 
possesses no active power except when 
operating within finite portions of space 
and upon finite masses of matter. 

What, then, is this energy that has been 
called gravitation ? Answers to this class 
of questions — referring to such things 
as life, mind, spirit, and to radiant energy 
of all sorts — must, at present anyway, and 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 289 

very likely always in the present state 
of existence, be limited to describing 
the phenomena which they cause: — the 
things themselves — the causes of the 
phenomena — are mysteries beyond the 
grasp of science. We can only answer 
the question, What is gravitation ? by 
telling what it does. 

The idea that material bodies have an 
attraction for each other is very old 
(Humboldt's " Cosmos," vol. ii., pages 
309, 310, and notes). But, like all other 
truly scientific thoughts which had their 
birth in early times, it went to sleep when 
Rome obtained mastery over the Medi- 
terranean world, dethroning art, science, 
and philosophy, and putting in their 
places war, plunder, and taxation. From 
the blows which the Roman power dealt 
to the old civilizations, the world did not 
begin to recover for over seventeen cen- 
turies, that is to say, from the time of 
Ptolemy V until the time of Copernicus, 
19 



290 FINITE AND INFINITE 

at the beginning of the sixteenth cen- 
tury. 

Some of the writings of the early as- 
tronomers, preserved in the Alexandrian 
library in Egypt, were brought to Spain 
by the Moors. During the thirteenth 
century portions of these were translated 
into English and German, and the result 
was shown by an awakening of interest 
in England and Germany, and a zeal for 
astronomical research which soon spread 
into Italy and France. Civil wars pre- 
vented early fruition of this good seed in 
France and England, and its first results 
were seen in Germany and Italy. Among 
those early books there was one, written 
in the sixth century, by John Philoponus, 
an Alexandrian astronomer, in which the 
motions of the heavenly bodies were 
ascribed to two forces, centripetal and 
centrifugal, — an impulse to fall upon the 
earth coupled with a " primitive impulse" 
to fly away from the earth. It was easy 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 291 

for Copernicus to transfer this idea to 
the theory of planets moving around the 
sun as their centre of attraction ; and 
this conception of Copernicus was later 
and more clearly set forth by Keppler 
in his works " De Stella Martis " and 
"Harmonices Mundi," a.d. 1618. Gali- 
leo was a contemporary of Keppler. 
Keppler died in 1630, and Newton was 
born in 1642. Although, as we have 
seen, the common idea that Newton was 
the first to ask the question, Why did 
the apple fall ? is erroneous, and although 
the conception that gravitation is a factor 
in producing the motions of heavenly 
bodies was at least a thousand years old 
at Newton's birth, yet it is one thing to 
suggest an idea of that sort, and quite 
another thing to prove it. Newton 
proved it, and hence he is credited with 
having discovered it ; and, after full trib- 
ute has been paid to those who preceded 
him, there remains enough for Newton's 



292 FINITE AND INFINITE 

credit to place him far in advance of all 
others in this particular field of inquiry. 
He formulated his discoveries and mathe- 
matical demonstrations into what has 
been called " Newton's Law of Gravita- 
tion." It is not always stated alike in 
the text-books ; but there is no material 
disagreement as to it. 



CHAPTER X 

The law of gravitation as formulated by Newton : 
its three subdivisions — How the energy of 
gravitation acts : its mysterious behavior — Why 
the law of gravitation is inoperative in an infinite 
mass. 

The law of gravitation was stated by 
Newton substantially as follows : 

''Every particle of matter in the universe 
attracts every other particle with a force whose 
direction is that of a line joining the two, and 
who&e magnitude is directly as the product of 
their masses, and inversely as the square of their 
distance from each other." 

In order that what follows may be the 
better understood, I will restate this law 
by dividing it into three logical sub- 
divisions, without in the least altering its 
meaning ; 

( I ) Direction. — Every particle or body 

293 



294 FINITE AND INFINITE 

of matter in the universe attracts every 
other particle or body of matter with a 
force whose direction is that of a line 
dividing the two. 

(2) Magnitude. — The magnitude of 
the force with which particles or bodies 
of matter attract each other is propor- 
tioned to their masses. 

(3) Fluctuation. — The force of this 
attraction of particles or bodies of matter 
for each other fluctuates so as to increase 
with decreasing distance, and decrease 
with increasing distance ; the ratio of 
such increase and decrease being such 
that, if two bodies whose centres are 
eight thousand miles apart attract each 
other with a force equal to forty horse- 
power, then, by decreasing the distance 
to four thousand miles, their attraction 
will be increased to one hundred and 
sixty horse-power, and by increasing 
their distance to sixteen thousand miles 
their attraction will be lessened to ten 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 295 

horse-power ; so that as distance is 
halved the force of attraction is quad- 
rupled, and as distance is doubled the 
force of attraction is quartered. As 
Young says, a mass that will weigh 
one hundred pounds at the earth's sur- 
face, i.e., four thousand miles from the 
earth's centre, will weigh only twenty- 
five pounds at an elevation of four 
thousand miles above the surface, — 
eight thousand miles from the centre. 
(Young's "General Astronomy," pages 
115, 116.) 

In further explanation it may be said 
that by the "magnitude" of the force of 
attraction is meant a constant factor, not 
depending upon anything but the mass. 
The mass of a body is the quantity of 
matter it contains ; not its volume, for a 
body of matter in the form of gas may 
be large in volume, while the same body 
condensed to a solid will be comparatively 
small, but the mass will be the same in 



296 FINITE AND INFINITE 

both cases. That mass, whether in the 
condition of gas or of a sohd, possesses 
a certain amount of attractive energy, 
and this may be called the " magnitude" 
of that attractive energy. It takes four 
times as much of this energy to produce 
a given amount of attractive force, say 
forty horse-power, at a distance of sixteen 
thousand miles as at a distance of eight 
thousand miles ; but bodies of matter 
cannot lessen or increase their attractive 
energy, and therefore a body of matter 
capable of producing a certain quantity 
of attractive force, i.e., doing a certain 
amount of work, at eight thousand miles' 
distance, will do only one-quarter as 
much work at sixteen thousand miles' 
distance, because the increased distance 
has quadrupled the difficulty of doing 
the work. This is analogous to what 
happens if a man takes one end of a pole 
in his hands and tries to lift the other 
end, — the longer the pole the harder 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 297 

becomes the task. His full strength may 
be sufficient to move the farther end of 
a pole ten feet long quite rapidly up- 
ward. But increase its length to twenty 
feet ; now let him again put forth all his 
strength, and the farther end of the pole 
Is raised quite slowly. In both cases he 
has exerted all his strength ; let us say 
the "magnitude" of that strength has 
been the same in both cases, but its 
effect has been much less on the long 
pole than upon the short one. 

While attractive energy appears to 
radiate in all directions from a body of 
matter, this radiation certainly does not 
lose strength through increasing dis- 
tance in the same way as light does, 
— i.e., by diffiision of a unit of radiant 
energy throughout a constantly broaden- 
ing area of space. For instance, a 
certain amount of light will send more 
rays to a gaseous body than to the same 
body condensed into a solid ; not so with 



298 FINITE AND INFINITE 

gravity ; it pulls the one as much as the 
other. The direction of the force of 
attraction is a line joining the centres of 
the two attracting bodies, and all the 
attractive energy is expended upon that 
line when they are spheres, as in the 
case of the stars and planets. There is 
another very singular thing about this 
energy of gravitation : take the case of 
the Sun attracting Mercury, for example. 
It is not supposable that the Sun exerts 
any less than his entire power of 
attraction upon Mercury. Now give him 
another planet, Venus ; he continues 
to exert his full power upon Mercury, and 
he also exerts his full power upon Venus. 
Add the Earth ; his full power of 
attraction is now exerted upon each of 
the three. Add the outer planets. Mars, 
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune ; go 
on and surround him completely with an 
envelope of planets, so that there shall 
be trillions of them. He exerts his full 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 299 

power of attraction upon each and all of 
them. Here is something that eludes 
mathematics, — a veritable mystery. We 
need not forget that two bodies of large 
mass will be drawn together more forcibly 
and rapidly by attraction than would be 
the case if the mass of one of them were 
reduced, but that is because they attract 
each other. What I am calling attention 
to is the attractive energy latent in a 
body, — energy lying there ready for use 
if occasion comes. Suppose a material 
sphere of a given size, and another one- 
tenth as large. There would be a cer- 
tain distance at which the larger sphere 
can pull the smaller one with a force 
equal to one hundred horse-power. 
Now, we cannot suppose that the larger 
body has really the power to do more 
than this, — that the expenditure of this 
energy, which at that distance has been 
converted into one hundred horse-power, 
is less than the entire attractive energy 



300 FINITE AND INFINITE 

possessed by the larger of the two 
bodies. Yet place another similar mass 
of matter in another direction from it and 
it will put forth another one hundred 
horse-power in pulling that ; place a 
thousand such bodies at the same distance 
and we have one hundred thousand 
horse-power ; place a million and we 
have one hundred million horse-power ; 
surround it with them so that there shall 
be a complete shell of these globes, say 
a trillion of them, and this one central 
globe exerts attractive force equal to 
one hundred trillions of horse-power. 
Each new demand seems to add to the 
supply of energy ; and so, gravity is the 
mystery of mysteries of the material uni- 
verse, refusing to be explained by the 
ether theory, or any other. 

As these comments upon the law of 
gravitation may have diverted the read- 
er's attention from the question, What 
is gravity able to do in a finite universe 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 301 

that it cannot do in an infinite mass ? I 
wish to now recall the foregoing state- 
ment of Newton's law of gravitation, and 
its three logical sections or subdivisions. 
It is quite plain that in an infinite space 
filled with matter, the first and second 
sections of this law would be the only- 
parts of it in effect, and would keep 
everything at a stand-still. An infinite 
mass of particles and bodies of matter 
surrounding each and every individual 
body and particle would exert an equal 
pull in all possible directions. These 
pulls would exactly neutralize each other, 
and the condition would be precisely as 
if no such thing as gravity existed. Start 
any one of these bodies, or particles, in 
motion, and it would continue moving in 
a straiofht line in the direction of the 
force imparted to it, just as if neither it 
nor any other matter in infinite space 
had any such property as attraction, be- 
cause any pull against such imparted 



30 2 FINITE AND INFINITE 

motion by the infinite mass of matter be- 
hind would be neutralized by an exactly 
equal pull from the matter lying ahead. 
It follows, necessarily, that there is only 
one condition under which the property 
of attraction can exhibit itself, and that 
is, greater proximity of two or more par- 
ticles or bodies of matter to each other 
than to any others. This suffices to put 
into effect the third section of the law. 
The infinite mass of matter in space is a 
unity, a single thing when considered as 
a whole. Therefore it cannot be reached 
by the third section of the law, which 
does not apply to unity, but to divisions, 
or parts of the whole. The one infinite 
mass can therefore be affected only by 
the first and second sections, whose 
effect, unaided by the third, is nothing, as 
we have seen, on account of neutraliza- 
tion. But when a body or particle be- 
comes segregated from the surrounding 
infinite mass in such way, or to such an 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 303 

extent, that any other particle or body 
can come nearer to it than to any other, 
then, when that condition of greater 
proximity takes place, the third section 
of the law applies, and those particles or 
bodies set up an independent attracting- 
business of their own, governed by all 
three of the laws of attraction, but totally 
unaffected by the sum-total of attractive 
energies expended in infinite space. 

Thus we see that it is only in finite 
space, and as to finite masses of matter, 
that gravitation produces results of any 
sort. 



CHAPTER XI 

Gravitation and the Finite — The potentiality of 
a zone of empty space — The beginning of evo- 
lution, — a boundary between the Finite and the 
Infinite — Birth of the first sun — Probability 
that star-evolution progresses from within out- 
ward — More evidence that the universe is 
finite — What lies beyond the star system. 

And now let us return to that most 
wonderful of all epochs in evolution, 
when a boundary of void space was first 
placed between the Finite and the In- 
finite. We do not know, nor can we 
ever know, what the preliminaries were, 
— how it was done. We know that it 
was done because an instance of it exists 
before our eyes, — in the case of our own 
solar system, which is separated from 
the nearest stars by empty space for a 
distance of twenty-five millions of millions 
of miles. Ample room this for the third 
304 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 305 

section of the law of gravitation to be in 
effect, unhampered by the attraction of 
those far-away suns ; their pulls upon us 
can only be counted as part of the in- 
finite number of pulls coming to us in all 
directions from all the bodies and par- 
ticles of matter in infinite space, and 
which, as before stated, balance and 
neutralize each other. It is not to be 
supposed that any such enormous depth 
of void space marked the first separation 
of the Finite from the Infinite. But some 
zone of space was cleared between them, 
else the present condition could never 
have come to pass. Whatever the extent 
of that zone of separation — greater or 
less — it was enougrh to release the law of 
gravitation from its prison of Infinity, for 
the law that the power of attraction is 
lessened by increasing distance applies 
to all distances. That law, thus in force, 
would gradually broaden the distance be- 
tween the first embryo sun and the in- 
20 



3o6 FINITE AND INFINITE 

finite mass surrounding it. Finite quali- 
ties would be imparted to the matter 
composing this new sun and also to the 
inner crust of that infinite mass. What 
I mean by this is, that the third section 
of the law — that portion of it which oper- 
ates only under finite conditions, sepa- 
ration, isolation, distance — would now be 
in effect. This void zone of separation 
would remove the particles of matter of 
our embryo sun so far from those com- 
posing the inner crust of the surrounding 
mass that the pull of gravity instead of 
being equal in all directions, as it was 
before, would be weakened upon the 
side adjoining this empty space, so that 
the pulls would now be strongest in all 
directions away from this empty space, 
— inward as to the particles of the new 
sun, and outward as to the particles at 
the edges of the surrounding mass be- 
yond this empty space. The latter par- 
ticles, being now appreciably relieved 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 307 

from the stress of gravity upon the inner 
side, would be pulled more forcibly out- 
ward, while the particles of this new sun, 
being released perceptibly from the stress 
of gravity on the outside, would begin to 
attract each other more forcibly, tending, 
of course, toward the centre of gravity 
within their mass. The surrounding void 
would be, as it is, intensely cold. The 
condensation taking place in the new 
sun, and in the inner crust of the mass 
beyond this region of cold, would pro- 
duce heat ; as the condensation became 
greater the heat would become more 
intense. This condensation and conse- 
quent production of heat would go on 
with far greater rapidity in the new sun, 
because there everything would converge 
toward the centre. Vast eruptions, caused 
by explosions in the more condensed 
matter from which the new sun was 
forming, would shoot across this empty 
space and enter the infinite mass, caus- 



3o8 FINITE AND INFINITE 

ing storms, explosions, and convulsions 
in it. These explosions, following the 
line of least resistance, would shoot in- 
ward, populating this empty zone with 
other bodies of matter which, governed 
by the third section of the law, would 
condense. They might fall into the new 
sun if propelled in one direction ; pro- 
pelled in another direction, they would 
re-enter the infinite mass at some other 
point again by friction, igniting it, causing 
new explosions with similar effects. This 
process once begun must go on forever. 
Any cessation of it is inconceivable, be- 
cause any cessation of its cause is im- 
possible. The Finite has obtained a 
foothold in space ; evolution has begun. 
The orradual enlarg-ement of that finite 
universe is now inevitable ; it constantly 
bombards the Infinite, sending its con- 
quering invasions across the abyss of 
separation, bringing back the spoil of 
war. It will never stop for lack of other 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 309 

worlds to conquer, for all about it lies 
the impotent mass of the Infinite, power- 
less to move, and strong only in its ex- 
haustless supply, which suffers nothing by 
depletion, remaining, after each new raid 
from the Finite, as plethoric as before, 
for it has no bounds. 

Explosions like those I have suggested 
as taking place in the first embryo sun 
are witnessed to-day in miniature upon 
the surface of our sun, where streams of 
burning matter are thrown up to heights 
of more than one hundred thousand 
miles, — sometimes over two hundred 
thousand miles. All this would be inev- 
itable when the process once began any- 
where. This is all easily imagined. But 
a process beginning upon all sides from 
without and progressing inward is ex- 
ceedingly improbable, to say the least. 

If, then, we are located near the centre 
of the star system, the observed fact of 
decreasing numbers of stars in regions 



3IO FINITE AND INFINITE 

of space far removed from us is just 
what we should expect. In other words, 
we should certainly know that at some 
boundary outside of us, in all directions, 
we must come to the present limit of that 
particular finite effort of creation to which 
we belong, which began here, or near us, 
and is progressing outward. And there 
we should expect to find, not ready-made 
suns, but the raw material from which 
suns have been formed, and from which 
other suns are to be formed. I have 
already quoted from Comstock on this 
point, — the position occupied by our solar 
system among the stars. As to Wallace, 
I need only say that his book is largely 
devoted to a collection of facts all tend- 
ing to show the same thing. In the fol- 
lowing quotation from Young's " General 
Astronomy, "we have the opinions of both 
himself and Newcomb, pages 562, 563 : 

"It is certain, however, that the faint stars as 
a class are smaller and darker and more remote 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 311 

than are the bright ones as a class; and accepting 
this, we can safely draw from the star-gauges a 
few general conclusions, as follows : 

"We present them substantially as given by 
Newcomb in his * Popular Astronomy,' page 491. 

" I . * The great mass of the stars which com- 
pose this (stellar) system are spread out on all 
sides in or near a widely extended plane, passing 
through the Milky Way. In other words, the large 
majority of the stars which we can see with the 
telescope are contained in a space having the form 
of a round, flat disk, the diameter of which is eight 
or ten times its thickness. 

"2. 'Within this space the stars are not scat- 
tered uniformly, but are for the most part collected 
into irregular clusters or masses, with compara- 
tively vacant spaces between them.' They are 
'gregarious,' to use Miss Gierke's expression. 

"3. Our sun is near the centre of this disk-like 
space. 

"4. The naked-eye stars 'are scattered in this 
space with a near approach to uniformity,' the ex- 
ceptions being a few star-clusters and star-groups 
like the Pleiades and Coma Berenices. 

"5. ' The disk described above does not repre- 
sent the form of the stellar system, but only the 



312 FINITE AND INFINITE 

limits within which it is mostly contained.' The 
circumstances are such as to ' prevent our assign- 
ing any more definite form to the system than we 
could assign to a cloud of dust. ' 

"6. ' On each side of the galactic region the 
stars are more evenly and thinly scattered, but 
probably do not extend out to a distance at all 
approaching the extent of the galactic region,' or 
if they do they are very few in number ; but it is 
impossible to set any definite boundaries. 

'* 7. On each side of the galactic and stellar 
region we have a nebular region comparatively 
starless, but occupied by great numbers of nebulae. ' ' 

Very significant facts, these. Assur- 
edly they indicate a much lesser progress 
in the evolution of star systems in a di- 
rection at right angles to the plane of 
the Milky Way than toward that vast 
belt of stars. If any reader will look at 
the sky when the Milky Way is well 
risen toward meridian, he can easily ob- 
serve this fact with the naked eye. But, 
as shown in the passage quoted from 
Professor Comstock's book, the evidence 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 313 

of the telescope is still more convincing 
on this point, a small telescope disclos- 
ing as many stars as a large one in those 
regions of the sky at right angles to the 
galaxy, while in the galaxy and its neigh- 
borhood the larger the telescope the 
greater will be the number of stars 
found. And the largest telescopes do 
not find stars in these seemingly barren 
regions fainter than magnitude twelve. 
This is very significant, for it is the 
general belief of astronomers that, as a 
rule, faintness means greater distance, 
and the absence of faint stars in any re- 
gion of the sky indicates that the most 
distant stars there are nearer to us than 
the most distant ones in places where 
there are great numbers of faint stars. 
If we apply our reason to this fact we 
shall be inevitably led to the conclusion 
that the sidereal system is finite in ex- 
tent. No other condition will satisfac- 
torily account for this phenomenon. 



314 FINITE AND INFINITE 

What lies beyond this system of stars ? 
Is it empty space ? No one believes 
that. As Comstock says, " We shrink 
from thinking it an infinite void." If, 
then, we cannot accept the belief that 
it is empty, and the telescope proves 
that there are no stars there save those 
it discloses, what is it that keeps it from 
being a void, — what fills it in the ab- 
sence of suns ? And here we are met 
with another fact of great significance : 
those regions where there are few stars 
are rich in nebulse, rich beyond com- 
parison with those regions where stars 
abound. If we apply our reason again 
to this fact, we conclude that the re- 
gions where there are few nebulae were 
once rich in nebulae which have con- 
densed into suns, so that evolution has 
progressed far in those directions, while 
in regions of the sky where stars are 
few and nebulae abundant, the process 
of this evolution is going on much 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 315 

nearer to us. What is beyond ? That it 
is not void seems to be conceded by all ; 
that it is not filled with stars is proved ; 
that it is filled with primary forms of 
matter, such as the stars have been 
evolved from, is a necessary conclusion. 
Can we see this substance ? Why not ? 
There seems to be an abundance of light 
in its neighborhood to reveal it to us. 
Do we see it ? We see something that 
certainly looks as if it were there. We 
see something so deeply colored that if 
it were in our atmosphere it would surely 
prevent us from seeing a single star. It 
seems as if there is no escape from the 
conclusion that it is the sky. 



CHAPTER XII 

The lesson to be learned from a finite universe ; 
its refutation of the fundamental tenet of Ideal- 
ism — The fallacies of Idealism ; the danger to 
Christianity. 

In conclusion, let me again warn the 
reader against misinterpreting the pur- 
pose of the argument contained in the 
second part of this book. My effort 
has been to show that the universe is 
finite. Incidentally, the same facts and 
arguments which prove the finite extent 
of the universe seem also to prove that 
the sky is beyond the stars. But if I 
am mistaken in this inference, that mis- 
take does not in the least affect the va- 
lidity of the argument that the universe 
is finite in extent ; and this is the point 

under consideration. The first part of 
316 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 317 

this book was devoted to a discussion, 
from the stand-point of philosophy, of 
the idea of that system of theology 
known as Idealistic Pantheism, — the idea 
of a God of infinite bulk. As God must 
be known by His works, and as Idealism 
denies that He can in this life be known 
otherwise than through nature ; and as it 
asserts that He is in, through, and of, 
all nature, — the creator of both evil and 
good, of both pain and pleasure, — it be- 
came necessary to inquire into the 
spacial extent of this "nature"' which is 
claimed to reveal Him. If this nature 
is finite in extent, then we find that 
Idealism has failed to explain how a God 
of infinite spacial extent can be revealed 
by a nature which is of finite extent ; or 
why, if God is of infinite spacial size, 
nature is not also spacially infinite ; or 
how He can be conceived of as busy in 
that finite portion of space where evo- 
lution is found, and yet infinitely idle 



3i8 FINITE AND INFINITE 

throughout that infinite space which finite 
nature can never reach. 

An idea of God is absolutely essential 
to religion. The Idealists will not deny 
this. Fiske, to whom Darwin paid the 
compliment of saying that he was the 
clearest of all writers and thinkers, says 
that religion's three postulates are : first, 
a quasi-human God ; second, the undying 
human soul ; third, the ethical signifi- 
cance of the unseen world (" Through 
Nature to God," pages 162, 168, 171). 
And Fiske was an Idealist after a type of 
his own. I do not quote Fiske's admis- 
sion, that religion's first postulate is a 
quasi-human God, as a tenet of Idealism. 
Probably there are not many Idealists 
who have been able to think clearly 
enough to be forced to that conclusion. 
Fiske, though forced to it, was unable to 
explain it consistently with the tenets of 
Idealism. But when his reason could not 
be convinced his faith sustained him. 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 319 

And so he held that in some inexphcable 
way the two ideas — the idea of an 
infinitely spacial God, the postulate of 
Idealism, and the idea of a quasi-human 
God, the first postulate of all religious 
belief — could be blended together, not 
in human or finite conception, but in the 
conception of God. 

It may be asked, why do I call Fiske 
a teacher of Idealism? He professed 
to differ from the chief exponents of 
Idealism in many important respects. 
When I speak of Fiske, or any other 
philosopher, as an idealist, I have refer- 
ence to the conception of God to which 
their philosophies have brought them. 
Philosophers have adopted different 
names for their philosophies because 
their methods of philosophizing have 
differed, but I am dealing more with re- 
sults than methods. Fiske was a dis- 
ciple of Spencer, but he went farther 
than Spencer in elaborating a concep- 



320 FINITE AND INFINITE 

tion of God, as being "in all, of all, and 
through all." If this be not Idealism, 
what is it ? 

This is a mental attitude fraught with 
danger to religion. It is not possible for 
religion to have more than spasmodic 
and phantasmic existence in such an 
atmosphere. When we are asked to 
change our idea of God from a simple 
belief in a Being who has personality, 
and are urged to adopt views, the logical 
results of which are that He has not 
personality, and is unthinkable and un- 
knowable, so that if we still continue to 
believe in His personality we must do so 
in opposition to our reason, and in 
opposition to the ideas of order, law, and 
truth which His works reveal to us, we 
have a right to demand the very best of 
reasons for the proposed change of 
belief. And when, upon inquiry, we find 
that Idealism asks us to believe in a God 
who existed during an eternity before the 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 321 

existence of either good or evil, and con- 
sequently without knowledge of either, 
as they cannot exist outside of con- 
sciousness, we must inquire further 
as to what moral ideas existed in the 
consciousness of the God of Idealism 
during this eternity. Finding that good 
and evil comprise the sum-total of all 
ideas, we are led to inquire what sort of 
being could exist without possessing 
ideas of any sort ? How could he have 
made plans without ideas ? For if God 
created good and evil. He did it "once 
upon a time." That goes without saying. 
What about the time that passed before 
that moment when good and evil were 
created ? It was an eternity, of course. 
God, the Idealist tells us, is in His nature 
purely psychical, spiritual. So say we. 
But what sort of psychical being could 
exist before ideas of any sort came into 
existence? How are we to dissociate 
ideas from God ? How are we to con- 



32 2 FINITE AND INFINITE 

ceive of one existing without the other ? 
Will Idealism tell us ? On the contrary, 
it purports to be an idea doctrine. It 
took its name from the word. Thus 
Idealism destroys itself when it asks us 
to believe that good and evil, the sum- 
total of all ideas, were created. Has not 
Idealism, in order to force upon us a God 
of infinite bulk, been obliged to abandon 
another element of infinity, — His eternal 
existence ? For, surely, it is inconceiv- 
able that there could have been any God 
before the existence of ideas of any sort. 
But here, again. Idealism destroys itself, 
since anything which has had a beginning 
cannot be or become spacially infinite. 

To that constantly increasing number 
of people who are in the habit of using 
their reason and common-sense in 
matters pertaining to theology and re- 
ligion, as well as in other matters, the 
logic of Idealism, if followed out com- 
pletely, leads irresistibly to Materialism. 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 323 

The Materialist is the only consistent 
Monist. Those whose faith in God is, 
like Fiske's, too strong to be disturbed 
by Idealism, or anything else, are safe. 
But there are not so many such. A 
more numerous class is made up of those 
who have obtained a smattering of the 
Idealistic philosophy, and, thinking they 
understand it, sow its tenets broadcast 
among people whose minds may be so 
constituted that they are compelled to 
trace ideas to their logical conclusions. 
Such a mind must eventually abandon 
Idealism, or adopt Materialism, unless 
he belongs to that select few who, like 
Fiske, have a faith too strong to be 
shaken. Neither Berkeley, nor Spinoza, 
nor Fichte, nor any of the teachers of 
Idealism, except Fiske, ever traced that 
philosophy to its complete logical con- 
clusions. Fiske, indeed, is the only one 
of them all who made a philosophy of it, 
— taking in its relations to all things^ its 



324 FINITE AND INFINITE 

significance from all points of view. With 
the others it was not a philosophy, but a 
theology. 

The number of Christian believers 
who stand in danger of being led 
astray by Idealistic teachings is not 
numerically large, compared with the 
whole body of Christians. But, never- 
theless, as before stated, they comprise 
a very important class ; they are usually 
educated ; they teach ; they preach ; they 
write books ; they write for the maga- 
zines ; they are heard by very large 
numbers of their class ; they have wide 
influence. They control the Christian 
churches of every denomination. Now 
what I mean by this is, that Idealistic 
teaching is much more likely to be 
met with by the educated class, and 
that this class is constantly on the 
increase, and, therefore, destined to be 
in the majority. I do not mean that 
Idealism is more likely to be accepted 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 325 

by this class of people than by others. 
There is always a large class who can 
accept religious belief of almost any sort, 
because, with them, the more mysterious 
and inconceivable it is the more it com- 
mends itself If their priest, or minister, 
or prophet preaches it, that is enough 
to fully satisfy them. 

I see distinctly, to-day, and have been 
seeing more and more distinctly for many 
years past, the great danger with which 
Idealism threatens Christianity. I have 
waited for some recognized Christian 
teacher to sound the note of alarm, and 
expose the utter fallacy of this system of 
theology, which, while pretending to lead 
us to God, leads us to nothing, — giving 
us stones when we have asked for bread. 
I have not heard the voice of any Chris- 
tian teacher raised in an effective way to 
warn against this danger ; on the con- 
trary, I have watched many of them falling 
into the ditch, — blind Christians led by 



32 6 FINITE AND INFINITE 

blind Idealism. While I have, during 
practically my whole life, been a reader 
and student in many and divers fields of 
inquiry, my active life has been devoted 
to the legal profession. It would cer- 
tainly seem more appropriate for some 
clergyman to have written this book or 
some book having the same purpose. 
But it is possible that legal training may 
fit one to a certain extent for such a 
task, and, at all events, a voice from 
"the bar" will, with God's help, have 
force, and perhaps more force, in a way, 
than one coming from the pulpit. For, 
surely, when the occasion is such as to 
cause an humble attorney to sound the 
alarm, those who ought to cry out — 
whose duty it is to do so, should be 
awakened from their lethargy. 

The world needs Christianity, — the 
Christianity of Christ. There are many 
things, as there have always been in 
civilized lands, as well as in other places, 



A FINITE UNIVERSE 327 

that are evil, that constantly threaten to 
overturn civilization, or change it to a 
civilization worse than barbarism, — as 
history teaches us such evils, uncon- 
trolled, have done before in not a few 
cases. Religion is the only force that 
can preserve civilization from these 
dangers. And, in Christian countries at 
least, the only religion that can do it is 
Christianity, and the only organized force 
that can save us is the Christian Church ; 
and I use that term in the customary 
broad sense as including all Christian 
denominations. I do not mean to assert 
that the Christian Church has done all 
that was possible for the betterment of 
government or society ; it has too seldom 
comprehended, more than vaguely, its 
duties. But this I know, that it can 
save civilization and make it worth while, 
and that there exists no other organized 
human activity which has the power to 
do this ; therefore I believe that to de- 



328 FINITE AND INFINITE 

fend the Christian religion is to defend 
civilization, for a civilization without re- 
ligion has no adequate means of pre- 
serving itself. 



APPENDIX 



APPENDIX 



Akasa — Ah-kah'sah (the a in first and last 
syllables is pronounced like a in sofa ; the a in 
middle syllable is pronounced like a in arm). 
The ancient Hindu philosophers taught that there 
were five elements, fire, water, earth, air, and 
akasa, the province of the last being to conduct 
sound. 

Anthropomorphism — An"thro - po - mor' fizm ; 
ascribing human attributes to spiritual beings, es- 
pecially to God. 

Aristoteles — Ar-is-tot'e-leez. 

Haeckel — Hek'el. 

Hegel — Hay'gel . 

Herschel — Her'shel. 

Leibnitz — Libe'nitz. 

Martineau — Mar'tin-o. 

NouMENA — Noo'men-ah, plural of Noumenon. 
The noumenon is defined as the thing itself, its 
phenomena as those qualities of the thing, cog- 

331 



332 APPENDIX 

nized by the mind through the senses of sight, 
hearing, touch, etc. The Idealistic theory is that 
since phenomena are cognized by the senses and 
cannot reach the mind otherwise, they arise wholly 
from the mind which is in us, and therefore the 
noumenon being external must, if it exists at all, 
be unknown to us. The view opposed to this has 
been stated in different ways (see Fiske's "Cosmic 
Philosophy," volume i., chapter iv.). I prefer 
the following statement, which is original : Ideal- 
ists have assujned as a premise of their argument 
that all the factors which combine to make up 
what is called a phenomenon are derived from the 
consciousness of persons. The truth, however, is 
that in this idealistic sense there is no such thing 
as phenomenon, because what has been called by 
that name is made up of two factors. Take, for 
illustration, a star. It is made up of the sense of 
sight and the thing seen. Without sight, the 
thing (the star) could not be cognized, as no other 
sense can bring it to the mind ; without the star 
the sense of sight alone would be powerless to 
cause the phenomenon. The word phenomenon 
is therefore the larger term, embracing within its 
meaning both factors, while the term noumenon 
embraces only one. 



APPENDIX 333 

Parmenides — Par-men'i-deez. 

Parmenides was a celebrated Greek philoso- 
pher who lived in Southern Italy in the fifth 
century B.C. He is represented as a master of 
the art of logic. At the request of a company 
of learned men he consented to exhibit his dex- 
terity in this respect, and selecting as his respon- 
dent the youngest member of the company, 
Aristoteles, the conversation proceeds as follows : 

Par. If one is, the one cannot be many ? 

Aris. Impossible. 

Par. Then the one cannot have parts, and 
cannot be a whole ? 

Aris. How is that ? 

Par. Why, the part would surely be the part 
of a whole ? 

Aris. Yes. 

Par. And that of which no part is wanting, 
would be a whole ? 

Aris. Certainly. 

Par. Then, in either case, one would be made 
up of parts, both as being a whole, and also as 
having parts ? 

Aris. Certainly. 

Par. And, in either case, the one would be 
many and not one ? 



334 APPENDIX 

Aris. True. 

Par. But surely one ought to be not many, 
but one ? 

Aris. Surely. 

Par. Then, if one is to remain one, it will 
not be a whole, and will not have parts ? 

Aris. No. 

Par. And if one has no parts, it will have 
neither beginning, middle, nor end; for these 
would be parts of one ? 

Aris. Right. 

Par. But then, again, a beginning and an end 
are the limits of everything. 

Aris. Certainly. 

Par. Then the one, neither having beginning 
nor end, is unlimited ? 

Aris. Yes, unlimited. 

Par. And therefore formless, as not being 
able to partake either of round or straight. 

Aris. How is that ? 

Par. Why, the round is that of which all the 
extreme points are equidistant from the centre ? 

Aris. Yes. 

Par. And the straight is that of which the 
middle intercepts the extremes? 

Aris. True. 



APPENDIX 335 

Par. Then the one would have parts and 
■would be many, whether it partook of a straight 
or of a round form ? 

Arts. Assuredly. 

Par. But having no parts, one will be neither 
straight nor round ? 

Aris. Right. 

Par. Then, being of such a nature, one can- 
not be in any place, for it cannot be either in 
another or in itself. 

Aris. How is that ? 

Par. Because, if one be in another, it will be 
encircled in that other in which it is contained, 
and will touch it in many places, but that which 
is one and indivisible, and does not partake of a 
circular nature, cannot be touched by a circle in 
many places. 

Aris. Certainly not. 

Par. And one being in itself will also con- 
tain itself, and cannot be other than one if in 
itself; for nothing can be in any thing which 
does not contain it. 

Aris. Impossible. 

Par. But then, is not that which contains 
other than that which is contained? For the 
same whole cannot at once be affected actively 



336 APPENDIX 

and passively, and one will thus be no longer one, 
but two ? 

Aris. True. 

Par. Then one cannot be anywhere, either in 
itself or in another ? 

Aris. No. 

Philoponus — Phil-op'o-nus. 
Plato — Play 'to. 
Renouvier — Ren-oo'vee-ay. 
ScHELLiNG — Shel'ling. 
Spinoza — Spee-no'zah. 



INDEX 

r 

A 

Absentee-God, 90, 91 

Absurdities, conception of, 33, 34 

Act of God, the, 94 

Action, at a distance, 89-93, 240-248 

infinite action impossible, 39-44,47, 127, 156 
Anthropomorphism, 74 
Appendix, 331 
Astronomy, teaches decline of natural evil, 153, 

155 

B 

Berkeley, Bishop, 53, 74 

C 

Carlyle, bon-mot on Absentee-God, 90 
Cause, first, 15, 16, 47 

eternal, 16 
Causes, secondary, 107 
Christianity, menaced by Idealism, 316-328 

world's need of, 326 

22 337 



338 INDEX 

Gierke, Miss A. M., 87, 202, 203, 311 
Color of sky, significance of, 167, 171, 172, 174, 
177-187, 191-200, 263, 264, 268, 269 

theories as to source of, 177, 179, 183, 184, 
191—200 
Comets' tails, 255-259 
Common -sense, 49-57 

definition, 51, 52 

hot a philosophy, 50, 51 

its use in philosophy, 51 
Comprehension, impossible as to self-evident truth, 

78-81 
Comstock, Geo. C, 226, 272, 282, 310, 312, 314 
Crookes, Wm., 22 
"Cyclone Smith," story, 109-118 



Density, in line of vision, 197, 198 

star density, 206, 207, 262, 265-268 
Destiny, is infinite, 15 

E 

Earthquakes, number killed by, 136 
Emerson, R. W., 74 
Energy, mental, 60 

active, exists only in the finite, 59-64 
Eternal realities, 107, 133 



INDEX 339 

Ether, theory, remarks by : 
Sloane, 222—225 
Comstock, 226, 227 
Humboldt, 229—231 
Irving, 231, 232 
Spencer and Fiske, 237-239 
Renouvier, 240—244 

the author's suggestions, 217—219, 232- 
23S> 244-248 
Ethics and Nature, 119— 132 

Evil, natural, idea that it is due to spiritual causes, 
94—106 
God, the enemy of evil, 98, 123-127, 143, 

147-157 
Fiske 's argument that God created evil, 

100-108 
God not the author of evil, 96-108, 150-162 
decline of, shown by science and history, 

144-149, 152, 153 
moral, decline of, 142, 147, 148 
changing standard of, 142 
Idealistic theory of, founded on conjecture, 

i35> 140 
Evolution, the Divine method, 1 6 
human interest in, 16, 17 
a process of changing forms, 59, 129 



340 INDEX 

Evolution, steps in, 126 
beginning of, 304-308 

F 

Fichte, Johann G., 74, 323 

Finite, the, composed of forms, 59, 82, 129 

results all are, 43-48 

harbors all active energy, 59-64 

sole repository of intelligence, 68, 82, 85 

may be self-existent, 64 
Finite Universe, ideas of: 

Gierke, 202, 203 

Newcomb, 203-210 

Snyder, 262, 263 

Wallace, 262, 265—268, 281, 282 

Young, 310-312 

star magnitude as evidence of, 249-255, 
261 

persistence of light as evidence of, 255-261 

starlight as evidence of, 203-210, 249-255, 
261, 262 

shape of star system as evidence of, 280-283, 

star density as evidence of, 206-210, 253, 

265-267 
sky as evidence of. See ' ' Sky ' ' 



INDEX 341 

Finite Universe, ideas of: 

the author's suggestions, 210-213, 220-222, 
249-252, 253-261, 273-279, 312-325 

First cause, of infinite, impossible, 16, 275-277 

Fiske, John, canon of truth, 26 
on divisibility of matter, 41 
theory of, that God created evil, 100-108 
remarks of, as to the ether theory, 237-239 
his disbelief in the existence of matter, 245 
on Anthropomorphism, 74 
modified idealism of, 75, 76 

Flammarion, C, 251 

Forms, the only products of evolution, 59, 82, 129 
necessarily finite, 59, 82, 129 
taken from infinite, 59, 82-84, 129 
no intelligence or active energy outside of, 
59-64, 68, 82, 85, 86 

G 

Galileo, 291 

Geology, teaches decline of natural evil, 144-149, 

152, 153 
God, meaning of truth that all things were made 
by Him, 65, 95, 129 
meaning of truth that all things are possible 

with Him, 65, 107, 127, 155, 156 
ideas of, 67-93 



342 



INDEX 



God, antiquity of ideas, 67, 68 
nature-God idea, 67-72 
Xenophanes's idea, 70 
spacial-infinity idea, 77-93 
Pantheistic ideas, 7 1 

Idealistic ideas of, in ancient Greece, 70 
among early Christians, 72 
among modern Protestants, 72, 73, 88, 325, 

326 
Fiske's modification of Idealism, 75, 76 
God, inconceivable except as a person, 67, 

73-76, 81-86, 317-319 
absentee-God, Carlyle's witticism, 90 
idea that God cannot act at a distance, 87-93 
God, found by searching, 122-127, 143-^49 
Fiske's argument that God created evil, 100, 

lOI 

did not create evil, 94—108, 150-162 

is enemy of evil, 98, 123-127, 143, 147-157 

His understanding infinite, 83-85 

power infinite, 83-85 

Good and evil comprise all ideas, 102—106, 
321, 322 

Gravitation, law of, 293 

analyzed and explained, 293—303 

mysteries of, 298-300 

history of its discovery, 289-292 



INDEX 343 

Gravity, operative only in the finite, 287, 288, 
293-309 

energy of, known to ancients, 289 

Philoponus's theory, 290 

Copernicus, 291 

Newton, 291-293 
Greek idea of God, 70 

H 

Habit, as basis of opinion, 130-132 

Haeckel, 271 

Hegel, Geo. Wm. Fr., 74 

Hamilton, Sir W., 80 

Herschel, John, 166, 267 

History of nature, lesson from, 133-157 

Hull, G. P., 256-259 

Humboldt, 229, 230, 267, 289 

Hume and Kant, controversy, 21—24 

Huxley, Thomas, remark about "mathematical 

mill," 44 
Hyslop, James H. , theory that nature is unethical, 

119 

I 

Idealism, antiquity of, 67-70 
definition, 71 
forbids belief in personal God, 73-76, 82, 83 



344 INDEX 

Idealism, in modern Protestantism, 72, 73, 88, 
325^ 326 

modern teachers of, 74 

Fiske's modification of, 75, 76 

dilemma of, 87-93 

incongruities in, 88-93, 100-105, 317, 320- 
322 

dogmas of, 1 1 4- 1 1 8 

not a philosophy, 105, 323, 324 
Infinite, action of the, impossible, 39-44, 47, 
127, 156 

is formless, 59, 75, 82 

the prison of all energy, 59, 60, 6^ 

harbors not the impossible, 64, 65 

no cosmic disturbance can reach or affect, 
60—63 

gravity dormant in, 287, 288, 293-309 

infinite mass is motionless, 60 

infinite divisibility question, 39—44 

infinite result, a contradiction of terms, 48 
Influence, is finite, 63 
Irving, Edward, 231, 232, 271 

K 

Kant and Hume, controversy, 21-24 

Keppler, 291 

Knowledge, search for, 21, 22 



INDEX 345 

L 
Leibnitz, idea of God and matter, 158, 159 
Light, 213-218, 227, 232-234, 259, 260 
Tyndall's explanation of, 213-218 
theory that it may be lost in transmission 
through space, 201-203, 205, 209, 210, 
212, 217, 218, 263, 264 
pressure of, 255-259 
starlight, 203-210, 249-255, 261, 262 
Logic, inductive and deductive, 44-47 

M 

Man, a composite of all infinites, 133 
"Man's place in the universe," 189— 191 
Martineau, idea of God and matter, 159 
Materialism, definition, 71 

a product of Pantheism, 71 

theory of, 113 

is the only consistent Monism, 323 
"Mathematical Mill," the, 44 
Matter, infinite division of, impossible, 41-44 

infinite mass of, no disturbance can reach, 
60-63 

combinations of, finite in number, 85 

is self-existent 127, 150-155 

is cause of natural evil, 134-157 



346 INDEX 

Matter, spacial extent of, 271-277 

Milky Way, or galaxy, 280, 281, 283, 284, 311, 

312 
Mill, J. S., 37, 159 

his idea of God, 159 
Mind, processes of, too rapid to be observed, 

28, 29 
Monism, three creeds of, 7 1 

Protestants are adopting, 72, 73, 88, 325, 

326 
is a misnomer, 161 
Moral evil, decline of, 141, 142, 147, 148 

N 

Natural evil, idea of its spiritual origin, 94-106 
God the opponent of, 98, 123-149 
direct causes of, 135 

contrary to prevailing order of nature, 141 
decline of, shown by geology, 144-147 

Nature, pertains only to the finite, 59 
Greek idea of, 70, 88 
is blind and purposeless, 1 19-122, 125 
contradictory phenomena of, 1 23-141 
God's ethical purpose revealed in, 125 
lesson from history of, 133-157 
Nature and ethics, 1 19-132 



INDEX 347 

Nature God, 67-72 

Greek idea of, 70 

personal idea of, 70 

analysis of the idea, 123-141 

disproved by evolution, 11 9-1 3 2 
Newcomb, S., 203,204, 206-210, 251, 282, 311 

argument of, as to finite universe, 203, 204, 
206—210 
Newton, Isaac, 291-293 
Nichols, E. F. , his experiment with light-pressure, 

256-259 
Noumenon, proofs of, 53-58 
defined, 331, 332 

o 

Oxygen, theory that color of, explains the sky, 
185, 186, 195, 196, 199 
Spring's theory, 185, 186 
Wallace's views, 195-197 

P 

Pantheism, creeds of, 71 
in ancient Greece, 70 
among early Christians, 72 
among modern Protestants, 72, 73, S8, 325, 

326 
modern teachers of, 74 



348 INDEX 

Pantheism, theory of, 1 1 1 

see also God, Idealism, Nature God. 
Parmenides of Plato, 45, 332-336 
Payne, Wm. W., remarks on sky, 171, 172, 179, 

201 
Pearson, Karl, 235 

Personality, impossible as to infinite, 59, 75, 82 
Pelee volcano, eruption of, 134 
Phenomena, constancy of, as proof of noumena, 

53-58 
Philoponus, John, 290 
Philosophy, its search for truth, 21-29 

how it may lead to error, 45 

besetting sin of, 35 

inconsistencies in, 57, 58 
Plato, idea of God, 158, 159 

Parmenides of, 45, 332-336 
Possible, the, and theoretical, 39-48 
Proctor, R. A., 267 
Protestants and Monism, 72, 73, 88, 325, 336 

R 

Realities, the eternal, 107, 133 
Reid, Thomas, common-sense philosophy, 49 
Renouvier, Chas., as to ether theory, 240-244 
Result, a finite thing, 48 



INDEX 349 



Schelling, Fr. Wm. Jos. Von, 74 

Science, relation of, to philosophy, 49-51 

Search for God, meaning of, 117, 123 
feasibility of, 122-127, 143-149 

Sky, ultra-stellar theory of, 165-200, 220, 221, 
268, 269, 273-278, 283-285, 312-315 
dust-sky, theory of, 1 81-186, 1 91-199 
Herschel and Tyndall as to, 180, 181 
Wallace, remarks on, 181, 191, 192, 193, 

195, 196 
Payne, remarks on, 171, 172, 179, 201 
Spring's oxygen theory of sky, 185, 186 

Sloane, hypothetical description of luminiferous 
ether, 222-225 

Snyder, Carl, as to starlight, 262, 263 

Solar cluster, 283-285 

Space, 77, 78, 82, 107 

empty space, potentiality of, 287, 288, 300- 

303 
Spacial idea of God, 77—93 
Spencer, Herbert, 27, 33, 38 
Spinoza, Benedict, 323 
Spirit world, attitude of human race toward, 37, 

95-105. 137-139 
idea that natural evil comes from, 94-106 



350 INDEX 

Spring, Professor, theory of sky, 185, 186 
Star, density, 206, 210, 253, 265-267 

magnitude, 249-255, 261 

light from, 203-210, 249—255, 261, 262 

proper motion, 284 
Star system, shape of, 280-283, 311 

not the result of a single evolutionary effort, 
287 

sun near centre of, 280-285 
Storms, primeval, 61, 144-146 
Sun, ours near centre of universe, 280-285 

eruptions on, 61 

first sun, birth of, 304-309 

T 

Theology, the coming, 17, 18 
Theoretical, the, and possible, 39-48 
Truth, search for, 21-29 

tests of, 21—29 

Hume and Kant, controversy, 21-24 

uniform experience test, 23 

inconceivability test, 23, 26 

ideas as to degrees of truth, 23, 24, 30, 35 

Fiske's canon of, 26 

Spencer's views, 27 

self-evident truth, 28, 35, 78, 79 



INDEX 351 

Truth, demonstrable truth, 36 

incongruity in classifying, 23, 26, 32, 33, 37 
spiritually discerned, 36, 37 
Truth nnay be undemonstrable, 80, 8 1 
no degrees of, 23, 26, 32, 33, 37 
may be incomprehensible though self-evident, 
79-81 

Tyndall, John, 166, 180, 182, 183, 184, 185, 213, 
227 
his explanation of light, 213-217 

U 

Universe, see Finite universe. 

W 

World, growing better, 98, 99, 126, 127, 140, 
141-148 
needs Christianity, 326 
Wallace, A. R., 181, 191, 192, 193, 195, 196, 
265, 281, 285 

X 

Xenophanes, 70 

Y 

Young, Chas. A., 253, 271, 282, 295, 310 

z 

Zoellner, 22 

Zophar's question, 122 



'9' iQm<o. 



. r^OV 7 III 



